Australia’s Strategic Examination of Research and Development explained what is wrong with the national R&D system, why reform is needed and how the system could be fixed. It did not explain how its recommendations would be implemented. In this new book, John H Howard examines how the SERD review lost its way and identifies the institutional machinery required to turn diagnosis into durable reform.

The centrepiece proposals in Ambitious Australia would redefine what counts as R&D, leave the fiscal cost unexamined, and concentrate benefits on a very small proportion of Australian innovative businesses. The expanded startup stream converts the RDTI from an R&D incentive into an early-stage business subsidy. No OECD country subsidises deployment and commercialisation through its R&D tax incentive. Without forward estimates, it is impossible to judge whether proposed benefi