 Welcome, everyone, to our final session of the A&U Crawford Leadership Forum. I'd like to start by celebrating, acknowledging the traditional airwaves and lands that we're meeting of, and specifically the elders past and present of the Nunnawal Mambury people and traditional custodians for this part of the world for more than 20,000 years. So I also acknowledge that many Australians here today are joining us from all over the world, and I pay my respects to elders past and present across all lands that we're seeing today. So it has been a very intense day and a half here of our ACLF 2021. And it's going to be a final session where we can talk a bit about some of the highest level takeaways that we've had. Now, I very much enjoy being able to meet and greet and have a coffee with people in person and really extend the conversation. We obviously have not been able to do that. But we have had an outstanding set of sessions that I have been able to attend. And I have to say it has been a very welcome distraction for me, not running the university for a day and a little bit and being able to learn and contemplate the big questions that our university of course is here to help answer. And so I really appreciate the diverse range of panels that we have had and I've had a chance, I think to learn a lot. It is great to be able to bring the best people that around the world together. And that will continue here in this final panel where I'm joined by Dr. Heather Smith and form director Richard Maude. I just, since we haven't actually introduced Richard you have probably seen him pop up in the middle of Julie bishops. I'm seeing when her line went off, but he's senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, in addition being the director of this forum, noting his lengthy stints at D fat, and also at ONA. Dr. Smith is commencing as professor of national security college here in the College of Asia Pacific, but she most recently served as secretary of department of industry innovation and science as well as the Department of Communication and Arts. She's a PhD economics here from a new and has served in many roles in government, including in ONA treasury D fat, and she was the G 20 Sherpa when Australia hosted it in Brisbane back in 2014. So, let's go through and have a little chat with Heather and Richard about the main things that we've seen and heard it's so much to cover. Let's start with you. What are the takeaways the three or four major takeout major takeouts you've had over the last day and a half. Well thank you Brian and it certainly has been a very rich couple of days of wide ranging discussion. So I, I thought of three key takeouts. The first of those is really across the world I think the focus is really on domestic economic renewal and to preoccupy governments for the years to come. So, from what I heard yesterday we're facing a global economic recovery that is fragile that is uneven. And it's unclear that technology which we've discussed over multiple forums and still having that similar discussion, whether technology is going to deliver the productivity dividend needed to meet citizens expectations, particularly now given the generational constraints economies face with high debt and budget deficits. I had worryingly that intergenerational inequality between and within countries looks set to increase with all the problems that will flow from that. But in the short term there was a key point, particularly made by the World Bank that vaccine access is going to really be the key determinant of growth rebounds for individual countries. So related to that, and this is my second takeout that rather than some people saying that the post war global operating system is being disrupted. My take on what I heard over the last day and a half is the view more that the global operating system that we have known is not fit for purpose. And that it's run its course, even as simultaneously we have been shaped by the two themes that have dominated I think this, this group, at least in the sessions I was involved in and that is obviously great power competition and technological change. But I don't think we've yet got the clarity of what the next model is the organizing principle for the world. I don't think we're yet in the world of the two block or two systems, but a world of constrained globalization to me seems likely going forward. The two sessions that I sat in on technology I think really sort of demonstrated the paradox and I think was put really well in in the US National Intelligence Council 2040 report on global trends where we're in a world that is both inextricably bound by productivity, but fragmenting in different directions and I saw this in conversations around, again, technology where you could say one of China and the Democratic world are on a unity ticket when it, when it comes to how do you constrain the market power or technology in the digital platforms, but really diverging deeply on the motivations and the objectives of how you approach, approach that issue by sent to be focused on the pursuit of fairness and equity but very different objectives when it comes to how you constrain the use of technology. I think for me probably the overarching theme and it's I'm going local now is, I think it's going to be a lonely world for Australia to to operate in. And I say that because of a number of cross currents that I picked up. Firstly, the increasing calls that we're we're hearing for greater self reliance and reconceptualization of the US alliance. This is to be a no going back in terms of our previous relationship that we've had with with China. The new reality is the treasurer said yesterday is that Australia is at the front line of strategic competition in the economic arena. Noting now I think in here this paper on the first day around the defense discussion is really important in pointing out that there's no rhetorical. Support for Australia on China's economic coercion that this is yet to really translate into any measures that would impact on China. I think also we're in a we're in a more lonely world if we remain elected when it comes to the decarbonization of the world. And I think the the operating model as it involves and Richard's really good paper on the China session and talking about competitive coexistence. How about challenge us in ways that we can be effective because it's going to be very hard to really integrate necessarily wide array of policy approaches across our defense and our foreign policy on our economic space. And in a thing that I thought was interesting from the defense session yesterday. And use of the language that will need to be better at strategic empathy that we will need to get be kept on the tone that we adopt within the region but also to look at our region through others lenses. Finally I was struck by the perhaps the disconnection between the treasurer's comments that implied that the drivers and policies are in place to shore up Australia's resilience both now and into the future. This stood in contrast to what I thought was the very good and rather robust discussion in the session on Australia's resilience that concluded I thought that we aren't well placed economically, culturally, politically and institutionally to deal with the challenges and the inevitable shops that are going to come our way. So that sort of left the thought in my mind that if this view is right and the price of the treasure acknowledged that we will have to be paid for this resilience could be significantly greater than is currently understood. So that was my three takeouts. Thank you, Heather. Certainly, you reflect a bit on things like climate change and I was a very sobering session where the mark haven really demonstrated that the predictions around temperature have been pretty well spot on, but we've actually kind of the bad bits of climate change like the actual rise of sea level and extreme weather in ways and so it's going to be an interesting ride. We also you also talked a little bit about what I saw was a consistent message throughout which is Australia really thrives in a well working globalized world and there seems to be downside after downside. About things changing to be less good that way. And so Richard, I guess, turning to you and what you picked up, I guess, yes, there's a lot of downsides and we keep talking about that but I'm curious to also know if there's any upsides and all of this. You're talking to a foreign policy person. Of course there are no upsides, although economists are more gloomy I think than foreign policy people. I don't know directly if I'm wrong on that. Not much, I have to say, although I will make a point that I think is hopeful and positive. Heather's been very disciplined and giving you three things and doing things in threes is usually best. I've got five. I've got two big thoughts that really struck me. I've got one data point that I found really interesting. I've got one quote that I found really interesting and I've got one. One issue that I think it's that is that we covered in the forum but it's not getting the kind of policy or political attention that I think it deserves. Heather, just cheekily upfront, though, Brian, just thank all our participants for sticking with us through the conference. We did design this conference to be done in person. It's a lot of content to shift online in the era where people are tired of zoomathons and I'm really grateful for people staying with us. I'm also really grateful for the many people across the university who helped pull this conference together, not just the events people, the program people, the media people but the broader set of experts in the university who are very generous with their time to be on panels or chair panels and to help me devise panels so that the climate change panel, which I thought was terrific, for example, was sort of mapped out over a cup of coffee a very long time ago with Mark Howard on the university campus. So onto my two big things. Well, we really, we all know this but but listening over the past day and a half really ran home to me that governance and governing is just so hard at the moment. It's never been easy but when you do a day and a half of this, it just strikes you that the size of the challenges we're grappling with the sheer number of them, the complexity of them and the fact that they're all happening at once. So we've got a pandemic and a health crisis. We've got an economic challenge. We've got a climate crisis going on. We've got the biggest shift in our external strategic environment since the end of the Second World War. We've got the tech story we've got pressures on democracy so systems everywhere governments everywhere are hard pressed our government, our public service is certainly very hard pressed. It's also tired and there are a few moments I think where that came through and one of our participants noted at one point in the conference that resilience is not just about systems and institutions but but also about individuals. I was also struck when thinking about all those big challenges by the gap between the perception of all the view of many of our expert panelists about what we had to do now but also in the future. Both over the sort of short to medium term and the long term the gap between that and how the government thought we were doing and what we might need to do, or at least what our ministers and senior officials who are very kind to appear with us were prepared to say on the record. I've got a couple of quick observations about that I mean things do often look different inside government, and it's important for universities and think tanks to understand that especially when they're looking to work with government to influence the development of policy. The second point is that there are limits to the ability of any government to fix really complex problems but thirdly, and this is I think my positive point and this came through strongly right across the conference. We do actually have the tools and expertise and we're not short of ideas on how to move forward on any of these challenges across the public sector in the business community and within the academic and think tank and not for profit worlds. And then lastly on the scale of this challenge. One thought that came through to me across the conference is that leadership counts it really counts to tackle these challenges and many panelists I think it's had that said in relation to climate change and looking for more leadership across our nation a stronger drive to get some reforms done that are going to go to these issues that are essential for our living standards to the equity issues that either mention and also to our environment. The second big thing that was really struck by was the Treasurer's speech was a strong speech a really striking one. I wrote a piece a few weeks ago that said Australian foreign policy was now dominated by just two super challenges one was responding to the various dimensions of the pandemic, and the other was dealing with a more authoritarian nationalist and assertive China. And if you'd asked me to guess I would have guessed that the Treasurer would have focused on the first of those dealing with the pandemic, but he chose to focus on the second. And I think that really just demonstrates how much the government is gripped by this challenge from China at the moment, how seriously it takes the economic coercion that we're under at the moment. It's determination not to give into that that was very clear in the speech, and also its confidence in the flexibility of our economy and its ability to adjust to economic pressure. And then also there was a very clear message for the business community in that speech which which I also thought was striking I mean we have heard the government talk a little bit like this before but the Treasurer was very clear that businesses really had to pursue a China plus model to use his term now that they had to take diversification seriously that the risks of over dependence on China were growing. So this is you know uncharted territory, of course for Australia, and no real break for Australia China relations, as far as I can see, for the time being. I agree with Heather that we're not seeing a two block world but I think through the conversations over the conference we did clearly see that there's definitely a degree of separation going on now, whether that's on values, or on democracies versus autocracy, whether in part on technology, or in the way the multilateral system is working. And in that multilateralism panel, for example, really eminent experts like Tom right are advocating for the democracies or like minded to move on without China and autocracies, if that's necessary to get things done. Look, the data point I wanted to mention, which struck me came from a really fascinating discussion on liberal democracy and its internal troubles. And we had Daryl Karp from the Museum of Australian Democracy join us and she quoted some data from the Edelman survey of trust in government which looked at a number of countries across the world. And in Australia, 76% of what Edelman calls the informed public trust government, compared to only 48% of trust in Australian government for what Edelman called the mass public. And this has led to a phrase called trust inequality and it's quite marked in Australia, Edelman himself says that this trust inequality provides ample ground for nationalism and protectionism and he talks about an Alice in Wonderland moment of elite buoyancy and massed spare about the way in which democracies work. So the health of our democracy is good, especially compared to the United States, but Larry Diamond also in that session left us with a ringing a warning that rang in my ears which was don't be complacent and he said don't think that some of what's happened in the US can't happen here in Australia, even with the stabilizers we have like preferential voting and independent electoral commission. My memorable quote is from a Dr Gishankas Crawl Federation last night really terrific speech since discovered that this quote is getting around a fair bit on Twitter in the media but he said the days of unilateralism are over. Multilateralism has its limits. Multilateralism is simply not working well enough. That leads us to look for more practical and immediate solutions. And that is the case for the quad, the quadrilateral security dialogue. There's a whole world of foreign policy and strategic assessment in those two sentences and it speaks to Australian foreign policy, as much as it does to India's. And lastly my my issue that I think needs more policy attention and more political leadership. We had a great session on nuclear disarmament or the lack of nuclear disarmament was a masterclass really with Bob Einhorn from the United States and the pretty sobering discussion that the takeout was really that there are no there is no chance of reductions in nuclear arsenals at the moment and indeed China looks set to increase its nuclear deterrent potentially quite significantly. North Korea has just started the Yongbyong reactor from which it uses to extract plutonium. So if there's any hope it has to rely on risk reduction that is trying to create the conditions and norms that would prevent nuclear weapons ever from being used but that in itself is a very hard task at the moment and requires some more elbow grease. I'll stop there from. Thanks Richard. I guess I mean you had the benefit of trying to create the sessions here for everyone. Is there anything so so clearly nuclear proliferation is something that's going to come back at us over time and it's something that seems to diverge slowly over time. Are there other issues you wish you would have included as part of things as we see it now. There are inevitably issues that we couldn't cover or didn't cover enough. One of them I think is that in our own region we touched a little bit on this in some of the sessions but if you think about our own immediate really region particularly the Southwest Pacific and Southeast Asia. There is an enormous task here I think for Australia to help those countries recover from the pandemic to reopen where they can. To restore if we can help them some of the lost economic the economic growth that they've lost and that they've never got back. With the loss of human capital the increase in inequality the damage to many small businesses the damage to health systems. And I think that's going to require new kinds of partnerships for the long term. Some creative new thinking. And it really requires I think more substantial investments over and above the increased effort that we are already credit to the government is the government is already putting into the region. Here you see the world through slightly more economics lens than Richard although obviously you do a little bit of everything. What do you see as some of the other issues that maybe we could have spent more time on. It was a very comprehensive last eight last 36 hours but anything that we've missed from your perspective. In terms of what we miss perhaps in terms of emphasis. One one that came to mind when I was listening to the conversations was really how do we think about the long term consequences of what we've seen in the last year in terms of judging things. Particularly the speed with which he has been cracking down on business sort of under the guise of common prosperity I think we need to sort of understand what the implications of that are because I think for me relatedly is a question about are we actually overestimating China's financial power going forward. You can still be the largest economy, but not necessarily the most powerful economy, particularly with a system that directs capital and increasingly directs technology. So I think that's a that's worthwhile discussion the second. Second one came to mind in discussion around resilience and the pandemic was really what are the implications of our fractured federation, you know in terms of the theme of how to renew a damaged country. So that's a theme of our conference particularly when we have states in a federation that that don't accept and don't really take responsibility for the national interest. So how do we actually project a coherent and confident view of who we are if we don't come out as one and what we aspire to be in this world that we're trying to navigate so I think trying to understand what the federation looks like going forward I think is is a key thing. And Heather if I suddenly made you Prime Minister. What would be the theme of most focus on for the benefit of Australia, and I'm going to make you a non political Prime Minister but a technocrat. What do you think needs the most amount of effort over the next, let's say two years. Well, to me it's, and this is not a surprise but it's really, it's the new sources of growth that I think, you know where are they coming from we were living in a full paradise if we think the Australian economy is going to be sustained in a sustained growth surge as we come out of coven without addressing the underlying challenges and all of these were traversed by many of the last day and a half but to me, it is this this transition to sustainability and the circular economy and everything that is involved in the circular economy needs to be front and centre. And the only way to get there is is where we've been discussing over the last couple of days is really an integrated focus on innovation and there are so many economists had on there are so many opportunities for Australia in this space. I think, as we said yesterday, it was a good conversation about, we can't rely on the old playbook in terms of how we respond to crises that we're going to have to really think about more services led recovery and all the issues and reforms that go along with that. But we can't yet seem to get through that, that current paradigm. So, you know, one of the questions that also you were talking about is, you know, our governments are governments up for these types of reforms. I guess the conversations that I've heard over the last day and a half is that we will be continue to probably be disappointed in the pace and focus of change. And again, some of the discussions I heard that governments are very good at early stage crisis management but less less so in the slow burn challenges that really require anticipation shared responsibility and bringing the public along with you. So, you know, I think it's from the ask me to be a technocrat but also Prime Minister I think, you know, what would you be doing well I think it's about also getting you know political leadership which is what Richard mentioned unfortunately does come down to to that. But I think we're going to need more, more leaders of the type that Don Ruslan in a really good Monash monograph described that you actually need more doers than pleases people who will actually do things and bring the public along with them. So if that's going to require a more mature political debate, then I think what we're currently having across an array of issues and again in that same monograph series, so I think it was both really interesting because that question of how do you get change. I think what Brian, the President of the Senate also in the same series says that it's, you know, it's where it's really hard with the most operandi of political discourse is to impugn the motives of, of the individual rather than grappling with issues that require challenging so I think the political discourse and the ambition around political leadership has to be has to be part of that to really drive those new sources of growth. Thank you Heather yeah I mean certainly my reflection has been, if we are going to have a, for example, a China plus strategy which the treasure talked about Richard referred to. I'm in a very China expose industry of higher education, and I easier said than done. And I guess what I'm seeing is, we need to actually have the whole way of thinking about higher education policy in my case evolved before want to do that I can't just do it on my own. And I think that's true for every industry if we really do want to the circular economy where we clearly have a huge upside, but it has to actually be sort of co designed between business academia and government to make it work and I'm not sure that I'm seeing the political wherewithal from any side to really do that it's it's easy just to incrementally change and it will be an interesting evolution over the next few years Richard. I guess if I were to make you the technocrat, the technocrat Prime Minister, what would you be focusing on you talked about the two key issues earlier for Josh, are those the areas you'd focus on are there others. I'm tempted to say that on behalf of all the Prime Ministers that would come after me I would build a functional Prime Ministers resident suited to a G 20 country, but I'm sure I'd be held down by my party room. At least we now have a decent plane that you can take overseas and not be embarrassed by. Look, a couple of things. You know, our ability to shape our external environment is is is limited obviously now we have agency that's a that's a word that our Prime Minister likes to use and I believe in it very strongly we do have agency and we should and we have to run a very active foreign policy, but the parameters of that foreign policy are often quite tightly constrained by external circumstances the choices are often not as large as you might think. I suppose that's a long way of saying I think foreign policy kind of takes care of itself, and I would focus on domestic policy. One of the things about the 2017 foreign policy white paper which is you know I had a bit of a hand in shaping. It starts before even get to the foreign policy by saying that Australia has to invest in its domestic strength and resilience. And that, and that was the way that we would thrive in this world that was coming that we could see dimly then and we can see clearer now about how challenging it was the strength and house of our economy the strengths of our institutions the cohesiveness of our society. And I still think that's where we can do better. I wouldn't have a long list because governments that try to do too much get nothing done. So pick, you know a handful of things that really make a difference to a long term, even if they're politically hard knowing they're politically hard and try and build a national consensus around them. All right, well, thank you, Richard and thank you, Heather. I guess that discussion around the resilience of our democracy, which you've referred to I think at length Richard really calls into question of whether or not the Australian democracy and indeed Western democracies are prepared to evolve with the times. And I guess, make sure that we really do represent the whole set of constituents across our economies are across our nation, including young people who definitely seem a bit disenfranchised right now, but also the people from all sorts of backgrounds and we talked about that able and trust index and that the elite bubble which I'm afraid most of the people on this call sort of an habit seem to have a fairly different view of the world than the average Australian. And certainly for me one of the things I'm always trying to figure out is how do I connect to Australia so that we can move forward collectively. So, in wrapping up, I'd like to thank all of the speakers from all over the world who have agreed to be on our panels and as I said it's really those people and their expertise and wisdom and different perspectives that make the profit leadership form, what it is. We've had people again giving up their valuable time to participate in the conversations from all walks of life government business academia, and that willingness to give freely of their time, the wisdom and insight is greatly appreciated. We've had many good panel chairs have gone in and kept the conversation going, including many members of our own university but other universities think tanks, and academics around the world so thank you very much. Richard, let me thank you and your team, taking what is a kind of a mumble jumble of ideas and making a nice coherent program, and then having to at the last minute switch it to a fully online mode and that has been not just hard on you but it's been hard on the entire program and to the faculty who have been working with you over this time, and I think you've done it exceptionally well. I'd like to thank Mirvac, our generous sponsor for this year's forum. In these difficult economic times, it's great to have this support, I can tell you that we counting every penny within the university sector right now. I'd like to thank one and all of our conference participants for sticking with us. One of the things that we're going to do is be asking you to do an evaluation we use those evaluations to help figure out how we can prove things and look at how we might do things next year. And finally, we will have an in person program again next year. This has been interesting doing the digital programs but I think I'm definitely looking forward to an in person one. So, we hope to see you all next year, but we would certainly appreciate your feedback about what you all think would make an excellent discussion for Australia, and the world to have about how to make the world a better place. So, we hope you enjoyed things. Thank you for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you around the country this year, and next year as we open up. Best of luck everyone, stay safe, and for Heavens to Betsy, get vaccinated if you haven't already. Cheers.