Steve Burrells report in this weekends (June 16-17) Sydney Morning Herald will hopefully rally some public debate (whats it take?). Australia is currently riding on the back of the coal truck (once was sheep) to prosperity-but that betrays our failure to really engage in the critical planning needed in our public infrastrucure and its also is a good metaphor for our failure to embrace appropriate alternate technologies. Our failure to introduce true Broadband is a classic example of lack of imagination, risk taking and future planning. Aus. ranks 42nd in the world in internet costs, 16th in OECD countries in use, and failure (until prompted by an impending election) to understand the economic consequences of not rolling out at least 12Mb ps (IGb should be target) to all homes. The three tiered government is suffering inertia at all levels. Can we really embrace a creative information economy with anything less? In education we are seeing increased politicisation; senior bureaucrats who are not educationalists but career public servants. Their lack of real commitment to moving education agendas especially in the public sector are chronic. We are a country where the media shock jocks set the agendas, a country where economic expediency is the sole determinant of ‘planning’. Embedded innovation has left for sunnier climes overseas, leaving us with a vulnerability to self serving private interests. In education vendors are welcomed by systems who are short of funds, and their offerings are all too readily upheld as ‘innovation in education planning’. We are left with a timid bureaucracy afraid of real change for fear of it ending up on the front pages. We have the future thinkers for education in Australia-but not supported by the political will and conviction to enact these common visions.