Clever country: How many winged keels have you bought this week?

Science courses are the easiest to get into because there is no competition for places. Technology and engineering are even less desirable, perhaps for the prudent reasoning that says "what will I do with an engineering degree? Where will I work"?

There are some historic reasons for Australia's dismal performance in innovation and invention. Donald Horne, in the ironically titled The Lucky Country, pointed out the obvious: a nation that is, in his words, a place of branch offices of multinationals, is not going to be doing much research and development. That will all be done elsewhere, in the laboratories at head office, and that is the way we like it.

The persistent myth that Australians are inventive flies in the face of the evidence. The rotary clothes hoist doesn't cut it in the innovation catalogue, and the much-vaunted flight recorder is not much use in a country that doesn't have an aviation industry. As for winged keels – remember – as Barry Jones was fond of saying: "How many winged keels have you bought this week?"

There is one significant historical explanation for innovation success in countries like the US, Japan, South Korea and China: they all benefited from having closed, protected manufacturing sectors. While South Korea was rebuilding after the war between the South and the North, if you wanted to buy a car, computer or TV, it had to be Korean. This protected manufacturers from the consequences of failure caused by inferior products. They were given the time and space necessary to improve their products. This is how a nation that was a pile of rubble in 1952 became a powerhouse of innovation and excellence in manufacturing while we went from being one of the richest countries to our present status of, in the words of Lee Kuan Yew, the de-developing nation of Asia.