Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I would note that industry has reduced its contribution to the CSIRO's forestry sciences division over the last few years, which has not happened in other aspects of CSIRO's work—whether it is manufacturing or agriculture et cetera—so I would urge industry to reinvest in forestry science. I should also tell him that three of our universities in Australia have the highest rating possible, internationally, for their forest sciences courses and research. One of them is the University of Tasmania. Another is Southern Cross University, where I visited recently with the member for Page, and the other one is the University of Western Sydney. Given where the University of Western Sydney resides, it is an interesting success story for them. Those three universities have category 5 ratings, internationally, which is the best they can get, and three other institutions have at-world-standard forest sciences in their universities. So forestry science is well represented at the university level.

At a broader level, we are spending $11 billion on research over the next four years in our university institutions. It is an increase on what was being spent before, because the Prime Minister has a particular commitment to research, not just medical research but also research in our institutions, especially research that can be commercialised. I might just say, given the reform bill is being introduced tomorrow into higher education, one aspect of that is an increase in expenditure on research under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure scheme, a scheme that was coming to a funding cliff under Labor, and in a commitment to future fellows, 100 future fellows ever year for the next four years—another funding cliff left to us by Labor.

I thank the member for Denison for his question. I can tell him that other research grants were made in forest sciences to other institutions, not to the one that he refers. The government did put $24 million into UTAS recently, for the Antarctic Gateway, and I hope he will ask me more questions about education in the future.

Ms MacTiernan interjecting—

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