Jackie Kelly (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the chair of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Science and Innovation, the member for Kooyong, for giving me his time here this morning because I am required to speak in the chamber. I appreciate it very much. As always, Mr Georgiou, in chairing the committee, was extremely helpful, assisting all the committee members. I really enjoyed this committee inquiry. Although I did not get to as many of the meetings as I would have liked to, I tracked it through Hansard because it is something of critical interest to me in my electorate, particularly the chapter of the report on ‘human capital—knowledge and skills’. I would like to refer to three recommendations, Nos 3, 4 and 5. I would particularly like to emphasise recommendation No. 5:

The Committee recommends that the Australian Government establish a dedicated whole-of-government taskforce to develop a series of measures targeting the early development of entrepreneurial skills in the education system (including the early school years) and the broader community. To inform the development of these measures, the Committee recommends that the taskforce draw upon the expertise of educators, researchers and industry specialists.

A bit of an indication for me, in coming to that conclusion with the committee, was my work with the Children’s Discovery Museum in Western Sydney. The Children’s Discovery Museum is actually an American concept. It is functioning in most American cities bar Washington, where, on my last study trip, I found that the Children’s Discovery Museum had in fact closed. But there is severe competition in Washington with the Museum of Natural History and the whole mall of incredible educational institutions. But in Sydney, our state capital city, we do not have those same options, and even less so in our other state capital cities around the nation.

So how do you capture young people’s imagination and interest in science and encourage them to see that there is a job at the end of it? That is the critical thing, and that is why I have been a big supporter of the Children’s Discovery Museum concept, which initially will target just primary schools so that we are stimulating, capturing and keeping primary school children interested in science so they will then take it on into secondary school. I notice from the submission by the New South Wales Department of Education and Training that they are also interested in this key area and the drop-off in high school of students continuing with science.

One of the key ways to address this would be through a science centre like the museum running the curriculum so that the New South Wales education curriculum comes out through the science centre. Science classrooms, which are incredibly dull, have not changed since we were at school, Mr Deputy Speaker—the old Bunsen burner, the picture of anatomy on the wall showing muscles, a few veins and things; it is still exactly the same—whereas most of the other classrooms have really progressed with what I call the ‘Discovery Channel of learning’. Take music: it is so fantastic, with the rock eisteddfods that go on; there is just so much that young kids can do in that line of entertainment. Take sport: my parents were always telling me to get out of sport because there was no future or career in sport. I would never suggest that to a young person. You can certainly have a great a career in sport and afterwards in sports management.

But, with science, the children do not see a job at the end of it. We really need to make that connection, that there is a job at the end of it, and you would encourage that with this science centre. You would look at placing it adjacent to research facilities, having universities involved, and then having a clustering of industries around that, piggybacking off the research that is happening. Kids who go there in primary school could look to high school, to university, to clubs and associations, and to social activities and see a career and a future with Merck Sharp and Dohme or a number of the other companies that gave submissions to our committee.

It is interesting that a lot of companies made comparisons between Australia and other countries and I think it is important to pick up on those. This might sound like a particularly female point of view—and I am glad that the member for Mackellar and a few other women are present in the Main Committee with me—but recently at the Penrith markets I bought some shoes for $12. They are delightful shoes. All of my girlfriends compliment me on them; they are fantastic. But, if the fellow at the markets who sold me those shoes was making a profit, what on earth is China producing these shoes for? I have lost my local television manufacturer. It could not land the cathode ray tube for the television into Australia for the price at which China delivers the whole television set into Australia. I have lost a number of other manufacturing jobs in my electorate.

We need to be on this end of things. We have targeted health and health services as particular areas where we would like to see innovation and reward for future jobs, employment and wealth generation in Australia. I was talking to one of my constituents today who is involved with the private health industry. They would like to see trade missions overseas by our health minister saying: ‘Hey, come and have a look at Australia. We’re leading in this area.’ We could target the wealthy area within Asia and say: ‘If you are going to undergo a medical procedure, Australia is the place to have it done. We have this expertise; we have the people who can do it.’

As we lose our manufacturing industry and move to other industries, we can only go ahead with those sorts of sales programs internationally if we have the appropriately skilled people here. Hence, recommendation No. 4 is to get an expanded snapshot of what is happening in our education facilities. How many students being educated and gaining degrees in Australia are going overseas? Foreign students, to start with, were never going to stay here, but how many Australian graduates also leave Australia to work overseas? What are the workforce participation rates of our science, engineering and technology graduates? We need to look at these critical issues to see where they are going. Firstly, we are training fewer of these graduates and, secondly, those we are training are either shooting overseas or not practising in their fields. We have to enhance people’s ability to see job pathways or ways forward to create, through innovation, their own jobs in their own industries.

One particular statistic which I love that I often use with my primary school kids is that 60 per cent of them will be working in a job that does not exist yet. After these kids get through high school or university, they will work in a field that does not actually exist yet. That is what this report is all about. How do we find and, I suppose, pick winners in innovation? How do we find areas that will go ahead and then really target the human capital—the knowledge and skills—required to take those areas forward and bring them to fruition in terms of successful companies, whether or not they get listed on the Stock Exchange, that will create jobs in Australia for up and coming young Australians?

It was a very important committee process—the public hearings and the report—for me to be a part of, given the work I have done with the Children’s Discovery Museum and the concepts that they have worked through with the New South Wales education department. They are actually looking at moving forward, and the federal government has actually funded a feasibility study for them. They are looking at about three or four sites for the Children’s Discovery Museum. One is the Parramatta Civic Place opposite the Riverside Theatre, a place identified by the Parramatta City Council. This was a very bipartisan committee, and this is a bipartisan move by the councillors of Parramatta, the councillors of Penrith, who put forward Penrith Lakes, and the New South Wales government, who put forward the RTA lands at the intersection of the M7 and the M4.

So there have been a number of options put forward in a bipartisan manner by the Labor and Liberal proponents of this idea. I think it has tremendous legs. This committee report goes further, saying that it is a very good idea. My Western Sydney colleagues and I will certainly be pursuing with the government some really concrete outcomes from this committee inquiry. Again, my congratulations go to the chair; he did an outstanding job, as always—and I thank him very much for allowing me to now go and do my duty in the other chamber. I commend the report to the House.

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