Worse still, there is no long-term strategy to plan Australia’s future. We are in the process of being left behind, with a serious threat to our future living standards.

The world’s leading economies such as the US, China and Germany are focusing on the knowledge economy because that is where half of all future jobs will come from. It is the single most important challenge facing Australia’s economy post the mining boom.

Innovation and commercialising our world-class research as a driver of economic growth is fundamentally important to our future. Sadly, we are doing very poorly at it. That is the country’s major challenge.

Peter Beattie: State governments becoming irrelevant as power eroded