Trump pick Andrew Liveris told us his own plan for Australia in 2014

Andrew Liveris came here two years ago with a plan “to make Australia great again”, which he’ll now use in the US.

Andrew Liveris on a campaign stage with Donald Trump.

The chief executive of Dow Chemical, Andrew Liveris, came to Australia just over two years ago to announce a radical plan “to make Australia great again”.

Australian governments turned their back on the plan but US President-elect Donald Trump has selected Darwin-born Andrew Liveris for a key role to implement large parts of the Liveris plan for Australia “to make America great again”.

Trump has appointed Liveris to head the American Manufacturing Council and be “tasked with finding ways to bring industry back to America”.

He will work with Trump’s new secretary of the Department of Commerce, 79-year-old Wilbur Ross, a specialist in rescuing US companies from bankruptcy, a champion of American manufacturing and, according to Trump, a person who “knows how to help companies succeed”.

And a third person with a key role in “Making America Great Again” will be Andrew Puzder, head of CKE, the California-based owner of the Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr fast food chains, who like Liveris lives with the looming impact of robots and artificial intelligence on employment. Puzder has been a longtime campaigner against efforts to raise the minimum wage.

Trump says Puzder will “save small businesses from the crushing burdens of unnecessary regulations that are stunting job growth and suppressing wages”.

All three are very skilled operators who, if given the right environment, will transform the economics of America and make the US the most competitive nation on earth, leaving countries like Australia way behind.

But at the 2014 ADC Leadership Retreat Liveris gave us a remarkable blueprint to begin the process of generating a much higher level of wealth and employment for the nation and slashing our youth unemployment. And so I again set out the 2014 Liveris plan for Australia and invite you to watch the video interview I did with Liveris on Hayman Island.

Back in 2014 Liveris did not know that South Australia would become the long-term blackout centre of Australia but forecast gas shortages and much higher prices in NSW and Victoria if we did not start planning to gain reliable non-coal energy — gas.

The first part of the Liveris plan did not seem important in 2014 but later events showed how right he was. Liveris said we must start by giving farmers rights to substantial revenue from gas found under their land. That way the economics of farms would be transformed and they would become supporters of exploration and development, not opponents (which is what happened).

Australian experts needed to go into the rural town halls and community centres to explain just how simple and non-threatening “fracking” was.

In Australia, Queensland gas producers pay farmers $200,000 a year, which has transformed their farms and given jobs to their families. They understand the benefits of working with the gas producers.

The Liveris plan not only involved much larger payments than those in Queensland but the payments were to be enshrined as a right, as happens in the US. Without mineral rights Australian farmers successfully opposed exploration and development in Victoria and NSW, which has now created the crisis Liveris predicted.

Andrew Liveris

Liveris explained in 2014 that if the governments of NSW and Victoria lifted the moratorium on fracking enormous reserves of gas would be developed. There was also gas in central Australia.

Once we had the gas, stage two of the Liveris plan would swing into action because the gas development would require massive employment, creating pipeline investments to bring it to market. A free market for gas should be established, which will promote that development. Pipelines are ideal infrastructure investments for our self-managed funds, which would then involve the wider Australian community in the projects and help boost retiree income.

Liveris explained that Australia could not only prevent a gas supply crisis but would be able to greatly reduce the cost of energy and create thousands of jobs in upstream manufacturing. Dow was one of the companies who would love to invest in Australia.

Liveris predicted that creation of those jobs would resolve the critical issue of our time — rising youth unemployment.

“Everywhere I go it’s a topic,” he said. “Youth unemployment is the issue of our time and it keeps me up at night. Australia will have to diversify. What worries me about Australia is it’s a farm, a hotel and quarry. That’s not going to create enough jobs.

“More and more I’m seeing countries behave like companies,” Liveris said. “They’re looking at their competitive advantages. We hardly do any of that.”

Liveris explained that a growing gas sector could help Australia exploit those advantages.

“The Canadians extract the high value components and do high-value add inside their economy. I’d do the same. For every dollar of gas you can make $20 of economic output. For every job in the gas industry, five jobs in the value add.” he said.

Liveris explained that his plan to go from production to finished product in gas could be applied in Australia to many other industries, including pharmaceuticals.

And that’s the plan that Liveris will help implement in the US.

And because Liveris, Puzder and Ross are not public servants they will “drain the swamp” and make it work. We will need to send our politicians to the US to learn. We could have gone ahead of the US by acting on what Liveris told us in 2014.