We're not keeping up with countries that understand why science matters.
Now that innovation is a central policy issue, the challenge for the Turnbull government is to walk the talk. It won't be easy, because Australia's average investment in science and innovation is below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average and we rank near last when it comes to research and development commercialisation.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has a head start, outlined in his budget reply, but he faces exactly the same challenge. 
Tweaks and nudges won't do it. A turnaround is needed if we are to realise either party's visionary rhetoric. Since 2012, federal innovation investment has been cut by 9 per cent, and as a proportion of gross domestic product, we're now at a 30-year low, with further cuts budgeted. These are deep-seated trends. As a proportion of federal expenditure, we now invest less in science and innovation than we did in 2005. Other priorities have reduced our innovative efforts, while our neighbours, competitors and leading technology nations have stepped theirs up.
The leading countries per GDP are South Korea, Israel, Japan, Sweden, Finland, the United States, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and Singapore. Australia is bigger than half of these and yet our policy is to invest below the OECD average. Global research and development expenditure has doubled since 2000 and China is on track to exceed total US R&D expenditure by about 2020. Public debate needs to peg our international competitors and collaborators.
Yes, we've had almost a quarter of a century of uninterrupted growth, but will the next 25 years be the same as the past 25? PricewaterhouseCoopers' 2015 The World in 2050 report forecasts strong growth for Australia. But our unmet challenge is to remain internationally competitive during an era of unprecedented R&D, technological proliferation and all the change that will bring.
The Group of Eight universities are right that funding excellence is the way to go, but sector cannibalisation is an insular response. Defunding many universities to benefit a few just tweaks the status quo. It would improve Go8 research a bit, but at the national innovation expense of exacerbating technological inequality. Global trends suggest we need to invest funds and develop innovation policy according to international standards, at least.
Inequality, particularly educational and technological inequality, is a drag on national development. French economist Thomas Piketty argues that large capital more easily and aggressively outgrows general economic growth, which tends to concentrate capital and raise inequality.
A similar model exists for technological capacity: the ability to foresee, invent, develop, understand and use new technology provides self-serving advantage. Technological progress itself won't benefit human capital over financial capital, but its control, by all Australians, provides countries such as ours with distinct advantages. So, technological equality is pivotal to the development of Australia's innovation vision.
It is the owners and controllers of technology who get to introduce new impacts, as reports of stark inequality in Silicon Valley reveal. The growing challenge for democracy is to ensure the impacts of technological innovation are consistent with, in our case, the interests of all Australians.
The failure of our parliaments to respond to foreseen technological developments, such as the ride-sharing platform UberX and coal-seam methane, suggests Australian innovation policy has a long way to go, even after we tackle unproductive subsidies and basic start-up infrastructure.
Meanwhile, new technology is rolling out across expanding fronts. The challenge for our policy-makers is to legalise technology as it emerges, according to Australian principles and values. The publication this month of Technology and Australia's Future, a three-year project by Australia's Learned Academies, is timely given the bipartisan commitment to innovation.
Over 300 pages, it examines the implications of new technologies for Australia's social, cultural, democratic, security and economic systems.
"The greatest impacts emerge at the intersection of different technologies, resulting in new combinations, and their adaptation for new uses," it found.
"These impacts will be seen, over a long period of time, in the radical transformation of industries, the closure of businesses, and the creation and growth of new businesses enabled by new technologies."
If we're to walk the talk in the next 12 months, we need to be frank about the changes required to foster technology and manage innovation in the national interest. Time will tell whether Shorten or Turnbull will find the political cement and the fiscal bricks to build the most sensible innovation policy.