"Of course, we are!" - say Liberals and Labor.
"Nah, not really" - says Statista.
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Link:
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In terms of allowing conditions to create solid unicorn companies we are on par with Mexico, Chile, Argentina and some African countries.
China, India and even Brazil are doing much much better than we do.
The US are doing 50 (fifty!) times better. China is doing 10 times better. China (!) that our big-mouth politician would call "an oppressing, unfair police state" is doing something right, something that our strong democratic and fair dinkum society CANNOT deliver.
Who cares, bid up that house matey!
What do you think?
Is this the government or the people being the reason?
Door 1: Blame the Government
Easy way out. Of course that is their fault!
Surprisingly, they have not done much differently to other developed governments - i.e. created extra easy monetary conditions to flood people and businesses with money to allow investment, development and prosperity. Not much different except for ONE thing.
Whether this was due to English descent (UK also love their housing bubble and have similar laws / stimulus) or simply political greed, every Australian government (until recent Labor feeble attempts) have heavily subsidized property investment and incentivized poperty-related tax concessions.
It is not uncommon in the corridors of power to stimulate a particular sector of economy, BUT two absolute rivals (and our winner/runner-up in a Unicorn competition) have bubble-pressure release valves in their system. The US does this through cruel capitalism structure and creative destruction while China has a knack for "moving the asset bubbles around" through thoughtful inflation and bubble bursts via CCP means (not joking, they have had good luck with a set of wise men steering the wheel).
Both countries and governments have easily allowed a serious destruction of wealth through property bubble bursts (when it was required). That, however, cannot happen in Australia.
Door 3: Let's keep the ball rolling
Good choice, a safe one (until it's not). Shoveling money into commodities and property sector is a losers game as there is limited growth in those sectors by default. And after some time you need to start inflating the asset bubble to allow the same old economy keep "bearing gifts". The US and China are proving us that only EXPONENTIAL growth in tech and smart ways of doing business can deliver the desired levels of growth.
So what's wrong with the old school of "dirt and houses" trading?
As a country, we will need keep importing and warehousing bodies (immigration) in a hope that commodities boom will last forever (sadly it won't) and keep inflating that bubble until… well just keep inflating it. The cities will become more and more crowded (otherwise how you will keep the bubble inflating?), the jobs will be paying less and less in REAL terms, inflation will be high and higher (have you seen those RE prices, I will need to charge more for milk and eggs).
This option also has a VERY BAD social outcome as we will pay MORE for capital and LESS for labor which means that ALL younger people who don't have a lot to offer apart from their time and skills will earn less and will be taxed more. Pretty much a recipe for a civil war (or a nice old-school violent revolution) in 10-20 years time.
Door 2: Looking into the mirror
Who will you vote for in the coming election?
This is the crux of why Japan is so great at manufacturing but not so with tech.
Aus is somewhere in between Japan and the US.