Paul Johnson has taken on the top job at the University of Western Australia and says there is no time to lose in making Australia a much smarter country.
Australia will be at the centre of a major geopolitical power shift over the next 50 years but it needs to look beyond its natural resources to prepare for an ascendant Asia-Pacific region.
This global changing-of-the-guard will bring the major old world economies to Australia’s front door in search of new opportunities, but it’s innovation not Haulpaks that will drive this new economy, according to the University of Western Australia’s incoming Vice Chancellor, Paul Johnson.
Professor Johnson will succeed Alan Robson, who retires at the end of this year after more than 17 years in the role.
Currently the Vice Chancellor of La Trobe University in Melbourne, Professor Johnson believes Australia’s higher education institutions will play a pivotal role in preparing the economy for this radical realignment.
And he warns failure to do so could have dire consequences for future generations.
“One thing we have to do is make sure, through public policy and private investment that we don’t have one lucky generation,” Professor Johnson says.
“There are very striking examples in WA of what can happen when the resources run out. Coolgardie was once the third-largest settlement in WA and it’s now a town of about 800 people … because the gold ran out.”
He says the key to avoiding a major slump is building an alternative economy and supporting universities, which are the factory floor for new knowledge, new skills and new workers.
“Universities only have two product lines, ideas or knowledge and people, who can go into the workplace with up-to-date knowledge and skills in problem solving,” Professor Johnson says. “That’s what we need to build innovation in the knowledge economy.”
Asia’s power economies such as China are attracting investment from all over the world and he says Australia is uniquely positioned to benefit from this focus on our region.
“One advantage Australia has, in the longer term, is that it’s a stable democracy with a developed system of law and property rules as well as English as the principal language,” he says.
“Which makes it an obvious regional base in Asia Pacific for the old world.”
Born and educated in the UK, Professor Johnson has the advantage of an outsider’s perspective on Australia’s position in the global economy and its relationship to the old world powers of Europe and North America.
He moved to Australia with his family four years ago, well before the onslaught of the global financial crisis but it was the Australian culture as much as its economic performance that brought him here.
“In Australia people are evaluated more from how they are rather than by their family background or school,” he says. “I find the Australian approach more open than the British one.”
It was a cultural clash that initially put Professor Johnson on the path to academia, when he was a final year undergraduate at Oxford.
In the absence of a concrete career plan, he applied for a number of jobs as well as a PhD studentship.
His resume caught the eye of a prominent management consultancy, which offered him a great job, but there was a catch.
If he accepted the job, he was informed he must also accept the strict rules of their corporate brand, which would dictate what he wore, right down to the shade of his shirt and tie.
Unable to accept these sartorial restrictions, he took a PhD studentship. It was an off-the-cuff decision that has paid big dividends for the 54-year-old.
Before joining La Trobe University in Melbourne, Professor Johnson was deputy director of the London School of Economics.
He has also worked as an expert adviser for pension reform and the economics of demographic change for the World Bank, the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development and the British government.
Professor Johnson and his family will relocate to Perth late this year but they are already familiar with the world’s most isolated city from their time visiting his wife’s aunt and her three cousins here.
The move will give him first-hand experience of the rewards and pitfalls of a booming economy.
He acknowledges attracting students when the labour market is paying top dollar for unskilled workers is an issue, but he says there are many paths to university.
“What we need to reinforce is that the high paid jobs of today are likely to be the unemployment of tomorrow,” he says. “And, even in a hot labour market, people with degrees earn more.”
While acknowledging the significant challenges in transforming Australia from Asia’s mine site to an innovation hub, he says the success of the technology industry in California reveals the rich dividends that flow from the investment in ideas.
It also underscored the importance of ‘blue sky’ research projects in universities.
These projects, many of which are beyond the understanding of average Australians, often precede significant discoveries decades down the track but they require long-term vision.
“What we need is a 20- to 30-year policy agenda,” Professor Johnson says. “And it’s a challenge, can politicians take a long-term view about what is in the best interests of the citizens they serve?”