Australia’s ambition problem

Australia has a problem with ambition. I learned that the day I met Max.

What struck me wasn’t just his kindness, raw intellect, hunger to learn, or his open-mindedness—it was his ambition.

In a country that prides itself on “fair go” but too often punishes those who reach too high, here was Max telling me, unapologetically: “I’m going to build a $100 billion company.”

What you see externally:

• The $30m fundraise
• The elite team he’s built
• The growing recognition and press

Comes despite the internal walls:

• Rejection from major VCs
• Countless criticisms from friend and foe alike
• The quiet doubt slowly replaced by unshakable belief

Max’s story isn’t unusual because of what he’s faced—he’s one of thousands of talented Aussie entrepreneurs who’s left for the US in search of somewhere more open to bold ideas. It’s unusual because of his refusal to bend to Australia’s ambition ceiling. In a way, it’s every ambitious Australian’s story—including mine.

One of my earliest memories of ambition was from high school. I made the first XI water polo team as an eighth grader, which almost never happened. I thought my ‘friends’ would be excited for me. Instead, they iced me out.

I didn’t think I was better than them, but it didn’t matter. In Australia, if you want to strive, you’re supposed to hide it.

This isn’t just my story. Any ambitious Australian could tell you their version. And when you stack all these stories together, you start to see something bigger: Australia’s innovation crisis1 in miniature.

Our culture punishes people who aim high, quietly shrinking the country’s future: fewer breakthrough companies, fewer high-value jobs, and less wealth created here rather than somewhere else. This systemic issue manifests across three dimensions: cultural attitudes that discourage risk-taking, institutional frameworks that fail to support innovation, and policy settings that inadvertently penalize success while rewarding complacency.

The Cultural Mechanism Behind Our Economic Problem

Entrepreneurs here don’t just have to fight the usual market forces. They also have to push against a culture that questions and doubts and second-guesses anyone who dares to aim high.

The tall poppy syndrome2—our cultural tendency to cut down those who rise too far above the crowd—is a systematic constraint on our future, enforced through subtle social penalties against those who dare articulate outsized goals.

Yet every ambitious Australian eventually learns the same thing: the world is a very malleable place, if you know what you want and go after it with maximum energy, it often reshapes itself faster than you’d expect.

The real limits are mostly in our heads.

And the critics? They’re just part of the deal. If you can’t stand being criticized, you probably shouldn’t try to do anything new or interesting.

But in Australia, criticism has a particular flavor. It’s not usually about what you’re doing wrong. It’s about whether you should be trying at all. You hear it in the question people don’t quite say out loud: “Who does she think she is?” It’s not about the project. It’s about the culture. And it says more about us than it does about the people who dare to aim higher.

Critics make one big mistake: they assume the game ends when they say it does. It doesn’t. It doesn’t matter if they’re right the first time, or the second, or even the fifth. Ambition, if you pair it with resilience, eventually wins.

It’s just math. Flip a coin once and it’s all luck. Flip it a hundred times and you win about half. In any single venture, luck matters. But over enough tries, persistence beats luck.

Zero-Sum Thinking

Zero-sum players think the game is played once, and if you win, they lose. That’s where a lot of Australia’s tall poppy syndrome comes from—the idea that your success somehow diminishes mine, so I should try to cut you down.

Positive-sum players see it differently. They know the game keeps going. If you win today, it doesn’t hurt me. The pie isn’t fixed. It keeps getting bigger.

When we criticize people for aiming high, we’re playing a zero-sum game. When we encourage them, we’re playing a positive-sum one. We’re choosing to bet on abundance instead of scarcity. Letting go of insecurity and fear. Making room for someone else’s ambition and belief to lift all of us.

Tall poppy syndrome3 is a zero-sum mindset masquerading as “egalitarianism.” And it’s quietly holding Australia back from what it could become.

A lot of this confusion comes from mixing up money and wealth. In a household budget or a government department, money is zero-sum—if one part gets more, another gets less.

But wealth isn’t like that. Wealth—the goods, services, ideas, and opportunities people actually value—can grow without limit. It’s created by human ingenuity and good systems.

Take a simple example. If you turn an abandoned warehouse into a busy community space, you’ve made new wealth. The building used to sit there doing nothing. Now it’s full of people doing valuable things. You didn’t take from anyone else. You just made the pie bigger.

Kids understand this better than adults sometimes. When they make a gift by hand, they’re creating something new. It might not be worth much money, but it’s real value that wasn’t there before. The mistake adults make is assuming that because money is limited, wealth must be too. It isn’t.

What This Costs Us

Australia doesn’t have to choose between ambition and fairness. That’s a false choice. When entrepreneurs build great companies, they don’t take opportunity away from everyone else. They create more of it—through new jobs, better technology, higher living standards, and the kind of examples that pull others up too.

We all win when someone rises.

The paradox is that Australia has all the ingredients to do this well, but seems strangely reluctant to use them.

We have world-class universities and research centers4 that have produced 15 Nobel laureates5 out of a small population. We have political stability6, strong legal protections, rich natural resources, and a front-row seat to $38 trillion worth of Asian markets.

And yet we’re squandering it.

Labour productivity fell 3.7% in 2022–23, the steepest drop on record7, and productivity growth is less than half what it was during the reforms of the 1990s8. More voters are tuning out of politics entirely9. Housing is so expensive that the median home now costs a record eight times the median income10, and far more in Sydney. Our venture capital scene invests about $3.5 billion a year—only about one-seventh of what Israel does on a per capita basis, even though we have a bigger economy—despite our startups delivering the third-highest liquidity in the world, behind only the US and China11. And we’re investing about 40% less in R&D than the average developed country1213.

Young Australians face a perfect storm of higher effective tax rates14, real wage reductions15, housing unaffordability16, and education debt that prior generations didn’t shoulder. This pushes many to seek opportunities elsewhere17—exactly what our aging population18 can least afford. The “Fair Go” Australia prides itself on increasingly rings hollow for our youth.

One of the most worrying signs is how much economic complexity we’ve lost. Australia now ranks 99th in the world on the Economic Complexity Index19—a measure of both the depth and breadth of a country’s innovations—down from 57th in 1995, behind countries like Botswana and Honduras20. Instead of becoming more diverse and knowledge-driven, our economy has been going the other way. This decline signals fewer innovative opportunities and weaker economic resilience.

And in a shifting geopolitical landscape, we can’t afford complacency. China is actively reducing21 its resource dependency22 on Australia, while America’s inward focus means we may not be able to rely on their traditional security guarantees forever.

Tech leaders warn of a 650,000-person talent shortfall by 203023, and still our most ambitious people leave for places that celebrate ambition instead of stifling it.

Where Australia’s Ambition Deficit Is Costing Us Most

The evidence of our ambition problem is pervasive. Our universities generate research that rarely becomes commercial due to bureaucratic barriers24, while super funds control trillions25 yet barely invest in early-stage ventures.

This complacency extends to our political system, where we have a “small target strategy” combined with a “mandate mentality” that creates reform deadlock. Political parties avoid proposing significant reforms during campaigns through fear of marginalising their vote, then feel constrained from introducing reforms they didn’t campaign on once in government. Former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry calls this26 a systemic avoidance of bold vision.

The “mining myth27”—the false belief that Australia’s prosperity can be indefinitely sustained by resource extraction—has further undermined reform urgency. This persists despite the mining boom causing a 70% real exchange rate appreciation—the functional equivalent of a 70% tariff—that damaged other sectors of our economy, including manufacturing and agriculture.

Our fear of ambition hides in plain sight: not in what we say, but in what we fund, praise, punish, and ignore.

Innovation vs. Equality: The Myth Holding Australia Back

Some defend our cautious approach as prudent risk management, but this risk aversion has become pathological. Nordic nations prove that welfare and innovation can thrive together: Sweden spends 26% of GDP28 on social programs yet ranks 2nd globally in innovation29, investing ~3.7% in R&D and creating two billion dollar companies (“unicorns”) per million people30. Denmark commits even more (28% of GDP31) while ranking 10th in innovation32 with 2.3 unicorns per million33. Meanwhile, Australia produces just 0.43 unicorns per million34 and invests only about 1.7% in R&D35.

Our economic growth increasingly relies on population increase36 and resource extraction—exactly the opposite approach of countries outpacing us economically. This unsustainable path demands bold corrective action.

Rekindling Australia’s Ambitious Spirit

Reform requires leadership with vision. Previous reformist leaders like Keating and Howard tackled difficult reforms to cement their place in history, while recent political leaders have explicitly rejected37 legacy-building as a “vanity project.” This leadership vacuum cascades throughout Australian society.

Significant reform in Australia has historically required a “burning platform38” narrative—a compelling sense of urgency that motivates action. We need to articulate why Australia’s declining economic complexity and productivity represent a genuine crisis requiring immediate attention. The good news is, once we decide these are problems worth solving, the Australian government is incredibly effective by global standards at implementing and achieving policy goals—our state capacity is high. Joe Walker discusses this little known fact in his recent literature review, “Australia’s State Capacity39.” But the core message is: Australia can definitely solve these problems if we put our clever minds to it.

Specific reforms could include:

1. Reforming university commercialization to reward researchers for market outcomes and streamline lab-to-industry pathways
2. Implementing taxation reforms incentivizing long-term innovation investment instead of plans like the Labor government’s40: taxing unrealised gains in superannuation—which inadvertently reinforces the message that excessive success will be penalized
3. Investing more in the future sectors that matter: AI, energy, and robotics

Different stakeholders would benefit uniquely: entrepreneurs gain access to capital and support; universities increase research impact and funding; super funds diversify investments41 for long-term growth; and Australians access more high-value careers without emigrating.

The biggest problems we face—housing affordability, economic diversification, climate adaptation, productivity, and the energy transition—aren’t going to be solved with small tweaks. They need ambitious bets. The kind of bets our culture too often talks people out of.

What could happen if we let our most talented minds go after the hardest problems? What if we celebrated the people willing to take big risks instead of making them feel like outsiders?

In a world where our friends are getting more distracted and the balance of power is shifting, Australia can’t afford to sit back anymore.

Our future depends on whether we can learn to cultivate ambition across the whole society—not just tolerate it, but encourage it.

So, where do we start?

What We Can All Do

For the ambitious:

1. Embrace your ambitions without apology. When you embrace your ambition, you give others permission to do the same. Ambition, like courage, proves contagious when visibly demonstrated. If you have a nagging itch or sense you’re not living up to your potential, do something about it.
2. Avoid the critics, find the believers. The louder it gets, the closer you are to something meaningful. Distance yourself from people who scoff at “unrealistic” dreams.
3. Ambition doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t matter who you are or what field you’re in—science, arts, social work, business—Australia needs all forms of ambition, each with potential to transform our society in ways we can’t yet imagine.

For those witnessing others’ ambitions:

1. Realise that prosperity is not predetermined. The future isn’t inherited. It needs to be actively built, and right now, we’re not building enough. Don’t take for granted that the future will be as good as the past.
2. Ask yourself. Is my skepticism helping, or just protecting my own ego? Even if you don’t see the vision yet. See all the ways that something—or someone—can succeed, rather than fail. Be conscious of how your reactions might serve to regulate others’ aspirations rather than elevate them.
3. Realise that instilling belief is a high-return activity. At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind. It costs you relatively little to do this, but the benefit to them, and to the broader world, may be enormous42.

For the media establishment: start celebrating Australians for taking bold bets and address failure constructively, instead of preferring cautionary tales screaming, “I told you so!”

For investors: bet on builders, even if their vision isn’t fully clear. A small gesture of belief can alter trajectories and, with them, the country’s future.

When you let other people’s light shine, everyone wins.

You don’t just help them; you also see new possibilities for yourself in the reflection of what they’ve built.

The same is true for countries.

The Cultural Shift We Need

Embracing ambition doesn’t mean Australia has to give up who it is. It means evolving. The Australia that does well in the future won’t be the one that abandons its egalitarian spirit or its sense of fair play. It’ll be the one that builds on them—still committed to giving everyone a fair shot, but also learning to celebrate the people who take that shot and make something big out of it.

Imagine an Australia where our egalitarian values coexist with a culture of ambition—where we lift each other up rather than cut each other down. Where we channel our pragmatism not into skepticism but into solving hard problems. Where the tall poppy isn’t cut down but celebrated for reaching toward the sun, showing others what’s possible.

That’s an Australia I want to live in!

The real question isn’t whether Australia can produce world-changing people and companies. It’s whether we’ll finally stop punishing those who try.

And for anyone doubting:

I love Australia more than any other country in the world and that’s why I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually—because I believe in what she could become.

Post-read

1. thelastinvention.ai — My latest long-form essay on what’s truly at stake with artificial intelligence, what happens next, and why it matters.
2. Backing early-stage Australian companies — I’m investing in ambitious founders building globally relevant companies from here. If you’re working on something important: alex@alexbrogan.com.