If Australia is to derive maximum benefit from the global digital economy, the need to encourage and reward investment in high-speed broadband infrastructure simply must be the number one objective of a modern telecoms regulatory regime.

Clearly there is an urgent and unquestionable need for major infrastructure investment in this country.  Be it roads, ports, clean energy, water or telecommunications, the cries for multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects get louder by the day, along with the push for governments to fund or subsidise more and more of this investment.

The fact that Australia has experienced over a decade of sustained economic growth, yet is suffering from outdated and sub-standard infrastructure in so many sectors, begs the question - why have businesses (and governments) not made these investments during the good times?

With the implementation of the Hilmer competition reforms and a range of sector-specific regimes at the Federal and State levels, it has long been presumed that Australia has world-leading structures for regulating market power and encouraging competition. 

If we are honestly going to confront the major education and employment challenges we face today and in the next ten years, we need all the stakeholders involved.

For the last few months I have been leading the review of one of the world's largest human capital services companies. With more than a dozen business units and subsidiaries in Australia alone and locations spanning the globe, the review has touched on the pointy end of engagement with government and the public sector, labour and education policies and the rise of knowledge and intellectual property as a service component.

While conducting the review I have also had the fortune of seeing global research and data on the movement of labour, migration of skilled and unskilled workers and the dynamics involved in developing economies strengthening education infrastructures and skills training for the future.

As some of you will know I have also, in the last twelve months, spent time reviewing higher education frameworks in South Africa, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Malaysia.

On a recent trip to South Africa I noted a move towards consolidating vocational and technical education across what we in Australia would call TAFE.

Scratch most Australian organisations and you'll discover a productive diversity that's too good to miss.

The most useful ideas that think tanks produce are those that are not only practical and applicable, but imbued with easy logic. Sometimes they provide a new slant on things so that existing processes can be made more efficient. Other times, they reveal hidden assets that few have identified, though they're right in front of our face.

One such example was a project undertaken nearly 15 years ago by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA), in conjunction with the then Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA), which was part of the Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet. Sandy Hollway, who later went on to manage the Sydney Olympics ran OMA. The project looked at ways of making business more aware of the repository of skills, talents and contacts buried inside the country's multicultural workforce.

It is not uncommon in Australia to find firms scouring the globe for new markets for their products when, say, the brother of a foreign-born employee in the HR section is looking to import that very thing into their home country.

One of the key issues facing organisations and developed societies in the post-industrial age is increasing productivity in order to meet the demands of the changing global economy. There are calls to lift Australia's productivity to the top five in the world by 2012.