Policy robustness across scenarios
Not all policy levers perform equally across all futures. No-regret actions are robust regardless of which scenario unfolds. Conditional levers depend on how AI capability and diffusion actually develop.
| Policy lever | 1. Status quo / stagnation | 2. Incremental efficiency | 3. Fragmented advantage | 4. Global baseline shift | 5. Readiness gap | 6. Abundance / rapid transformation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Adoption
No regret
|
Strong | Strong | Strong | Strong | Strong | Strong |
|
Institutional capability
No regret
|
Strong | Strong | Strong | Strong | Strong | Strong |
|
Talent
No regret
|
Strong | Strong | Strong | Strong | Strong | Narrow focus |
|
Energy & compute hosting
Conditional
|
Conditional | Conditional | Strong | Very strong | Very strong | Very strong |
|
Startups & innovation
Conditional
|
Conditional | Conditional | Moderate | Moderate | Moderate | Weak |
Adoption
No regret1. Status quo / stagnation
Strong2. Incremental efficiency
Strong3. Fragmented advantage
Strong4. Global baseline shift
Strong5. Readiness gap
Strong6. Abundance / rapid transformation
StrongInstitutional capability
No regret1. Status quo / stagnation
Strong2. Incremental efficiency
Strong3. Fragmented advantage
Strong4. Global baseline shift
Strong5. Readiness gap
Strong6. Abundance / rapid transformation
StrongTalent
No regret1. Status quo / stagnation
Strong2. Incremental efficiency
Strong3. Fragmented advantage
Strong4. Global baseline shift
Strong5. Readiness gap
Strong6. Abundance / rapid transformation
Narrow focusEnergy & compute hosting
Conditional1. Status quo / stagnation
Conditional2. Incremental efficiency
Conditional3. Fragmented advantage
Strong4. Global baseline shift
Very strong5. Readiness gap
Very strong6. Abundance / rapid transformation
Very strongStartups & innovation
Conditional1. Status quo / stagnation
Conditional2. Incremental efficiency
Conditional3. Fragmented advantage
Moderate4. Global baseline shift
Moderate5. Readiness gap
Moderate6. Abundance / rapid transformation
WeakPolicy lever details
Accelerate AI adoption in firms, government, healthcare, and education. Productivity gains materialise when organisations deploy AI into workflows, not when a jurisdiction talks about capability in the abstract.
Improve regulatory throughput, procurement reform, and management practice. This is the enabling condition for everything else. Without it, approvals slow, procurement stalls, and gains remain trapped in pilots.
Develop and attract capability needed to implement AI — senior technical talent, applied domain capability, and mid-career workforce retraining. Talent has the longest lead times of any major lever.
Position WA for energy build-out, transmission readiness, industrial land, and datacentre-enabling approvals. Higher-risk, higher-reward — captures more of the AI value chain through infrastructure if demand lands in WA.
Support translation, founder formation, and deployment-linked innovation. A complement to the main adoption agenda, not the centrepiece. WA's structural constraints in capital and market size mean this is unlikely to be the main route to productivity.