Ideas and engagement: the Western Australian economic story

It's the state that produced novelist Tim Winton – who regularly tops polls of Australia's greatest author.

And it's the state that produced singer-songwriter Tim Minchin, who is currently wreaking offence and hilarity across the United States.

Innovation is at the core of Australia's future prosperity, and Western Australia is as well placed as any part of Australia to capture its benefits. Western Australia is a great example of innovation at work.

The Square Kilometre Array is one example of such a project. The Murchison site, 315 kilometres northeast of Geraldton, will be part of a project that will test Einstein's theory of general relativity, search for dark matter, and assess if there are other planets out there capable of supporting life.

But innovation also happens at a more modest scale - through breakthrough architecture firms, health researchers, manufacturing exporters and the like.

Governments need to ensure that every child gets a first rate education, which provides broad skills and critical thinking. Many of today's school leavers will finish their careers doing jobs that don't yet exist. So they need to learn to be flexible and adaptable.

Governments must provide appropriate infrastructure, such as urban rail. Look around the world, and you'll be hard-pressed to find a highly productive city that hasn't made the most of its city centre.

Congestion isn't just maddening, it's bad economics. And any government that thinks it can get away with skimping on infrastructure needs to get serious about productivity.

Finally, governments need to maintain what Lindsay Tanner once called a philosophy of 'Open Australia'. The old Australian model of tariff barriers and a White Australia policy made us poorer in wallet and spirit. Today, governments need to be willing to make the case for foreign investment, rather than merely pandering to the old canard that investment is good, except if it comes from overseas.