Yeah, this is one of the problems with the free market mindset. The government thinks they should stay out if everything, cut taxes, and then companies can thrive since they aren't burdened by taxes. In reality we have just lost all our highly skilled people overseas because they can't get good salaries here, then companies can't invest in R&D because they can't find the staff. Someone needs to seed the recovery and that means the government needs to raise taxes to pay for it (or at least stop cutting them).

Even Australia is shit for research funding. Canada is barely better. This takes years, vision, which is why no governments prioritize this despite the data showing poor productivity in their economy.