If it was not already apparent before Saturday evening, this year feels different and tougher. The global economy is resilient, but it is also highly uncertain. Disruption is no longer episodic. It is almost constant.

Growth is being weighed down by mixed investment conditions. While industries face their own specific challenges, businesses everywhere are responding to the same global trends whilst also keeping true to the fundamentals.

Three of those forces loom particularly large: energy, artificial intelligence and competitiveness. Each sits at the top of most business agendas, and each deeply consequential for Australia’s future.

Energy comes first because energy security underpins almost every economic outcome that matters.

Energy is a system input. It shapes industry costs, enables technology and drives economic growth. When energy is affordable, reliable and secure, productivity follows. When it is not, everything else becomes harder. Today, energy security is inseparable from economic resilience.

Solving for energy, however, is not simple. Australia is richly endowed, but abundance alone is not enough. The real test is whether we can deliver affordable and reliable energy at scale, be competitive in a global market, and keep faith with our net zero commitments at the same time.

This is not an abstract challenge. Energy policy decisions flow directly into industrial competitiveness and the confidence with which capital is deployed. Australia’s success in the energy transition will determine more than the emissions intensity of the economy. It will shape our competitiveness as a nation and the living standards of our society.

Get this right and energy becomes a source of advantage. Get it wrong and it becomes a constraint on growth.

If energy sets the conditions for productivity, artificial intelligence is becoming a powerful lever in unlocking that productivity.

The question is no longer whether AI works. The advantage now sits with those who can leverage their customer, product or operational data and integrate AI into their core business strategies and decision-making. Productivity gains will come not only from breakthrough innovations, but from the cumulative impact of incremental change.

For Australia, the opportunity is arguably less about building the chips or core technologies, and more in applying AI at scale to our intrinsic strengths, in energy, resources, agriculture, finance and education - this is where the big leverage points are.

This is coming to life today in BHP’s iron ore mines in the Pilbara, where AI and digital technologies are helping operators and engineers detect failures earlier, and avoid costly downtime.

Simply put, we cannot talk seriously about productivity without a serious commitment to what AI can unlock. A cautious, wait and see approach will leave Australia on the sidelines.

While AI presents new opportunities for productivity and growth, it is fair to say it is also not a panacea for the heightened uncertainties in global trade and investment. The nature of competition may have changed, yet the fundamentals have not. Global capital continues to look for certainty of investment settings, speed to approval and ease of doing business, and the capability to deliver in skills, energy and labour.

These fundamentals apply to companies and industries, but they also apply to nations. Australia’s competitiveness has been under scrutiny for several years now. The core issues have not changed, and neither has the urgency.

This has been underscored by the Business Council’s Global Investment Competitiveness Index, which ranks Australia 21st out of 42 comparable nations on economic and productivity fundamentals.

Clearly, Australia must restore the fundamentals of competitiveness and create the conditions for private sector led growth if we are to navigate an increasingly volatile global economy.

Nowhere is this more evident than in minerals and resources. In short: mining matters. For decades, mining in Australia has converted natural advantage into outsized economic outcomes. The resources sector has provided economic ballast through global cycles, supporting jobs, regional development, export earnings and government revenues.

That contribution has never been guaranteed. It depends on remaining a place where capital can be deployed with confidence, projects can be delivered, and long-term investment decisions can be made with certainty.

In a more competitive and fragmented global environment, success will not be determined by which jurisdiction offers the biggest subsidy. It will be determined by who competes best on the fundamentals: certainty, speed and capability. That is true for resources. It is true for energy. And it is true for every industry that underpins Australia’s prosperity.

That is how Australia wins.