Petro Georgiou (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—Can I say what a pleasure it is to participate in this debate on the report of the Standing Committee on Science and Innovation with the member for Lindsay, the member for Tangney and the member for Werriwa. It was a very bipartisan committee. Before I launch into the guts of what I have to say, can I also say, on behalf of the committee: we all send our good wishes to the deputy chairman, Mr Harry Quick, the member for Franklin, who fell ill during the report’s finalisation. I understand he is on the mend, but we do send him our thoughts.

Earlier today the Standing Committee on Science and Innovation tabled its report Pathways to technological innovation. This is a significant report in terms of assessing the current support provided across the multitude of pathways leading from innovation to commercialisation. In its call for submissions to the inquiry, the committee defined innovation as:

… the path of conceiving, developing and implementing ideas through to the generation of products, process and services.

Most importantly, the committee said:

It gives economic value to a nation’s knowledge.

The end of the 20th century has been characterised by a further opening up of the world economy and the growth of knowledge based economies. In this environment, innovation is critical to enhance productivity, economic growth and global competitiveness. There is an increasing recognition of the importance of innovation to securing Australia’s future economic growth, environmental sustainability and social wellbeing.

In recognition of the importance of supporting innovation, the Australian government has committed substantial sums of money—billions of dollars—under Backing Australia’s Ability, with a notion of enhancing our innovative and commercialising capacity. This has been a major investment. There have been a number of reviews, and the reality is that there is a substantial commitment; nonetheless, given the importance of innovation to Australia’s long-term economic performance, there is always room for improvement. The inquiry identified that there are areas of concern regarding the capacity of Australian business and research agencies to innovate.

When the committee undertook to inquire into pathways to technological innovation, it sought to bring together a series of successful innovations and look at the obstacles they faced in commercialising research, with a view to making recommendations to the government. I have to accept responsibility for this approach and I also have to say that it was a little bit simplistic, because life was not like that. From discussions with researchers and entrepreneurs and from the case studies, it became apparent that this attempt would only provide part of the picture.

The evidence that came through to the inquiry showed that many successful innovators experienced a smooth pathway to developing their products and finding markets, and these experiences affirm the strength of Australia’s innovation systems. But one of the difficulties that we discerned fairly quickly was that the people who were successful tended not to see the impediments in their path. Having been a state director of a political party, I can say it is a bit like running a successful campaign: you tend to forget all the things that went wrong in the course of it and focus on the bottom line. This came over quite strongly in our discussions with entrepreneurs, innovators and scientists. But the reality is that, in addition to these submissions about positive case studies, the committee did hear a number of stories about innovation that was hampered because of gaps in the innovation support system.

The reality that became apparent was that some pathways to innovation are well developed and relatively smooth for the Australian entrepreneur or the innovating business, and other pathways are less well formed. The committee has spoken to government agencies, researchers and businesses about where knowledge is needed, what difficulties are experienced and how support might enhance the pathway to innovation. From this process, Australian innovators themselves identified a number of consensus issues. The report seeks to address these concerns.

The key issue for the inquiry was the difficulty of defining and measuring innovation. Once again, the reality is that the complexity of a concept or a process is resolved in the first instance by fairly crude and rigid definitions—or at least clear and rigid definitions. As greater insight is gained into the process, the definitions and concepts become more and more fuzzy rather than more and more clarified. This was an interesting insight into what was happening. Essentially, the notions of innovation and commercialisation have become broader. I think it is important that the system is capable of dealing with a high degree of ambiguity, because the simple truth is that it is a complex process and we do not completely understand it in any template form. In my view and I think the committee’s view, far from being a criticism, the general reluctance to impose an iron cage on the innovation process is a very real tribute to people’s ability to deal with ambiguity and the fact that there are many sources and many processes of innovation.

As with the concepts, the notion of metrics in the system is quite complex. Metrics are essentially arbitrary determinants of how you measure innovation. We have had the generation of a significant number of metrics, and all of these are problematic in seeking to establish the level of innovation because, by and large, they all measure correlations rather than causes. They are about inputs rather than outputs. Once again, I have to say it is a compliment—partly because I may be a rigid personality myself—that the system has gained the capacity to say that the indicators are only indicators and we cannot impose them as final arbiters of what we fund and what we measure. Especially when governments are involved, I think the capacity for open-endedness is a tribute rather than a concern. But there are a number of indicators, and we do quite well on some and not so well on others.

What came through clearly—and there was no dissension on this—is that there is a need for greater business skills and entrepreneurship in the area of technological innovation. The resolutions that people put forward were, however, quite different. There is the classic problem of making a good researcher into a bad businessman. Once again, here it is important that, while pushing more knowledge into the system, we respect the fact that there are no templates in this. The recommendations of the committee, especially in this area, are in some respects reasonably open textured, which I think they should be.

The fact is that, when you are dealing with a complex area, the program structures are necessarily also complex, and complexity means that they are difficult to access. That was one of the problems that we encountered. The recommendations of the report go not so much to making the system rigid but to making it more accessible by providing greater information about it and by providing greater assistance to innovators to access the system. Here, again, there is a recognition of this complexity on the part of departments and, to a degree, they are trying to address it. We just think that there should be a greater focus on this.

This was an important and I think complex review. I do not want to pretend that all the recommendations are freestanding and do not require more work, because that would be incorrect, but I think that the committee had the insight to realise where it could make very definite recommendations and where it could say that more work was needed. I commend the report to the House.

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