NewsWrap: Friday 11 September - Kevin Rudd's radical plan for national security, economic resilience

So firstly, I'll say this.

Kevin Rudd at the Press Club was fascinating for anyone who is in this industry, who's been pushing for industry development support policies everywhere.

Kevin Rudd, as a former prime minister, his words obviously carry a lot of weight.

I mean, he really did sound the alarm.

To me, he sounded the alarm on a complacency in Australia.

In fact, he referenced Donald Horn.

It's no longer the lucky country, it's the complacent country.

He spent an entire speech virtually talking about three big megatrends around the rise of China being one and the geopolitical implications of that, the rise and rise of AI.

and the geopolitical implications of that.

And the third one being climate change, which includes energy and the energy transition and the geopolitical ramifications of that.

So those three big megatrends all, according to Kevin Rudd, result in this much more need for focused effort in national security and economic resilience.

And that translates to industry policy.

So quite fascinating.

He also had some words to say about, you know, needed to change the national mindset, including within Treasury.

I thought some of those comments were very interesting, touching on there about building it into economic thinking a bit more seamlessly.

I couldn't help but think about the Treasury issue.

paper on AI that was circulated last week.

This is the paper that they've done for the treasurer, head of the intergenerational report later this week.

And again, in that report, there was a disconnect, I think, between the productivity piece and what AI means for that, and then how we might build the economy through the sovereign stack, everything that basically the system minister for technology, Andrew Charlton, has been talking about at least a year now, So yeah, I thought that was really interesting that he pulled that out.

I thought that was a very important aspect, but yes.

So I guess that really gets to the nub of it.

There is this certainly disconnect between treasury and probably finance, I would say, focused on productivity and the diffusion of things like AI through the economy, early adopters of technology to produce productivity.

Elsewhere, industry being one, it's all about building local companies, local capability, and enjoying the productivity and wealth creation benefits of that.

So for Kevin Rudd to get on board in a big way does carry weight.

It's interesting, actually, also, he kind of got shirty through the Q&A after his speech because people weren't asking him specifically about the industrial policy positions that he had put forward.