A diagnosis without a treatment plan: Australia’s landmark R&D review never explained how its reforms would happen.

A policy case study from the Acton Institute for Policy research and Innovation, 17 September 2006

In a new book published this week, policy adviser and author Dr John H Howard argues that Australia’s Strategic Examination of Research and Development (the SERD), also known as Ambitious Australia, explained what is wrong, why reform is needed and what a repaired system would look like. It did not, however, explain how its recommendations could be implemented.

The book-length case study provides a forensic account of how the SERD Report was commissioned, produced, and delivered. Its conclusion is simple and carries a lesson for future reviews and inquiries:

Reviews of this nature, involving extensive and even tortuous consultative processes, must be matched by consideration of how the recommendations will be implemented, taking into account the reality of constitutional and administrative contexts and limitations.

From Ambition to Resilience: A case study of how a public review lost its way and the machinery Australia can now build was written while the key decisions that the Government must make remain open.

Dr Howard's verdict is that the report joins a fifty-year pattern in which ambitious reviews are welcomed, partially adopted and quietly shelved because they specify everything except delivery.

“The report is impressive on what is wrong with Australian research and development, and on why,” Dr Howard has said. “What it does not say is how any of it would be carried out: by whom, under what authority and on what timetable.

"The what and the why are the easy parts. The how is where every one of its predecessors died.”

The book documents the process by which the review’s recommendations have been handled by the Government as a menu rather than a package. “Universities celebrated a landmark report,” Dr Howard said. “What the sector actually received was a menu, and governments order the cheapest items first.”

The centrepiece of the response, the new National Resilience and Science Council, rests on the same administrative footing as five predecessor bodies dating back to 1977. “Every one of those five was renamed, refreshed or set aside,” Dr Howard said. “Without legislation, this new Council inherits the same uncertainty in its life expectancy.”

The book sets out the machinery that would make the Government's response stick, including a single Act of Parliament to establish the National Science and Resilience Council on a statutory footing.

The book also identifies nine decisions now facing ministers, officials and university leaders.

From Ambition to Resilience is available now from the Amazon Bookstore in Paperback and Kindle editions.  

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Acton Institute Publishing

• Publication date ‏ : ‎ 14 September 2026

• Language ‏ : ‎ English

• Print length ‏ : ‎ 161 pages

• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1764140737

• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1764140737

• Item weight ‏ : ‎ 349 g

• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.99 x 0.94 x 24.41 cm

• Book 3 of 3 ‏ : ‎ Thinking In Public

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Dr John H Howard is Executive Director of the Acton Institute for Policy Research and Innovation, Sydney. He has spent more than 30 years working in science, research and innovation policy through advisory, consulting and university leadership roles, including as Pro Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canberra. He has advised on every major innovation review since the 1990s.

John is the author of Australia’s Missing Innovation Policy, Will It Ever Be Found (2025), the Handbook of Innovation Ecosystems (2025) and, with Professor Roy Green, Turning AI into productivity: The role of innovation and industrial ecosystems, which will be launched by the Minister for Industry and Innovation on 22 September 2026.

John's forthcoming book, to be released next month, is titled Hidden in Plain Sight: How Innovation Ecosystems Create Value Through Complementarity, Conferral and Resilience.