The latest economic complexity rankings put out by Harvard were recently released. Australia dropped from 93 in the world to 102. One place ahead of Yemen, one behind that manufacturing innovator, Senegal.
I had missed the report until an article in the auManufacturing LinkedIn group brought it to my attention.
The best that can be said about Australia’s drop from 93 in the previous ranking to 102 in this current ranking is that we have made possible the performance of the 101 countries that are above us.
This includes such stunners as Bangladesh at 100, Honduras at 97, Uganda at 96, and the home of Voodoo, ranking as one of the world’s poorest countries, Benin at 99.
To be fair, the ranking methodology struggles to adequately quantify the benefits accrued by services in its calculations. This compromises the ranking of Australia which has an advanced but hard to count services sector, while exporting mostly commodities, which is easy to count.
Nevertheless, while politicians are ensuring the public debate (aka playground squabbles) is around irrelevancies like the chairman’s lounge, long term challenges in education, aged care, housing, equality of opportunity, and economy wide productivity go uncontested.
Take education for instance.
This is a very substantial sector generating billions in economic activity by educating the children of our Asian neighbours. Many see it as a road to residence, which will benefit our economy doubly, as they have paid for their own education. However, many return home, enabling the ‘connections’ highlighted in the report as critical to complexity to be made. Meanwhile, for our own kids, we have continued to make getting an education more expensive to the point where it is becoming unaffordable in the absence of parental support.
In our wisdom, we are in the process of ringbarking this pathway to complexity.
How stupid can we be?
I recall in 1980 then Singapore PM Lee Kuan Yew warning that Australia was destined to become the ‘White trash of Asia’. It seems his warning is coming to pass.
PS. November 22. This ‘Visual Capitalist’ graph of the 30 largest exporters came into my feed today, adding some flesh to the bones of the index. The make-up of exports of several of them should lead to some deep thought. For example, Holland, Switzerland, Belgium, even the battered UK, where there are no hydrocarbons or minerals in the mix, outrank our commodity driven export mix. This is a solid indicator of the ‘complexity’ to which we should be building.
Yes – but we have risen two places in the world rugby rankings!!
Geoff, yes, but that was before the utterly dismal showing last night against Wales.
Whoops, Just realized I was looking at the thumping Wales gave the Wallabies in 2023 when i k=made the above comment. Went back and looked again, and saw
we won last night in a canter!