SEVERAL people have stopped me in the last week asking why we, as a nation, can't seem to think and plan strategically?

We live in a region, the Asia/Pacific region, where other nations tend to think and plan in terms of generations.

Yet, we seem to be locked into a very short-term political game, where focus and governance drifts almost daily from issue to issue, and location to location, and where "spin" dominates substance.

We no longer have serious and detailed policy debates, and the media seems to have given up on the pursuit of policy detail, simply reporting the vacuous, little better than "dot point" slogans, that are masqueraded as policies.

So problems are left to drift, and grow, and "government" and "leadership" is not evident, nor, it seems, still really valued.

As a result, we end up with some quite bizarre outcomes.

For example, we are told that we can't leave debt and deficits to our children and grandchildren.

We also can't afford to leave them with the expectations and burdens of an "age of entitlement".

Yet, apparently, it is just fine to leave them, totally unprepared, with the prospect of a climate crisis.

We are also left with absolutely no explanation of the detail of our economic and social transition from an economy that was based on a resources boom, to whatever?

Where are the growth and jobs going to come from?

Treasurer Hockey told us this week that "Australia is on the threshold of its greatest ever era".

He was responding to ex-Treasurer Costello's statement that "our luck is running out".

Hockey provided no detail except to say that "whatever prosperity we're going to have in the future we're going to have to earn".

But, he didn't tell us how!

At the same time, Hockey is pushing the G20 to commit to delivering two per cent stronger growth than previously predicted.

The G20 will struggle to produce the detail as to exactly how this might be achieved.

In our case, the facts suggest that we are facing a decline in our standard of living, and that we will need to get used to much slower growth in the future, unless we can develop and implement policies to boost our national productivity.

The strong 1.1 per cent growth in Q1 this year, was all export driven. The collapse in growth to less than half that in Q2 reflected the collapse of net exports, under our still high dollar.

With the terms of trade and net export volumes likely to continue to decline, with consumer spending and non-housing investment weak, and government contracting, where can we hope to find the growth?

Also, international risks are mounting as recent IMF and OECD growth forecasts for Europe and the US have again been downgraded, and world financial markets wait nervously for the US to shift from "quantitative easing" to tightening, which risks slowing global growth even further.

In the circumstances, it is imperative that short-term politics be put aside, and detailed longer-term strategic planning and policies be developed, seeking to outline how we can hope to move forward, in Joe's words, "to earn" our "greatest ever era".

I fear such an exercise is well beyond our political leaders, from either side of the House.