Celia Hammond (Curtin, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Higgins for moving this motion and acknowledging the important role National Science Week plays in engaging our communities, particularly our students, in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Our government rightly values the importance of STEM, sees its importance for future generations of our workforce and is committed to making sure that STEM education remains a priority.

National Science Week is a fantastic initiative that celebrates science and technology and engages a variety of organisations and groups within my electorate of Curtin, from tertiary institutions, including the University of Western Australia, to the 54 schools in my electorate, libraries and science centres. The primary aims of Science Week are to acknowledge the contributions of scientists, to encourage an interest in science pursuits among the general public and, most importantly, to encourage younger people to engage with science and the world we live in. This year there was fantastic engagement across Australia, with over 2,077 events registered on the website. Approximately 1.5 million people participated in National Science Week and there were more than 2,000 tweets that mentioned the #scienceweek hashtag, which of course reflects one of our most recent technological advancements, Twitter—for better or worse.

Within my electorate there were many schools and organisations celebrating National Science Week, but I would like to comment on one event in particular, the Perth Science Festival, which took place at the Claremont Showground. The festival featured more than 50 stallholders from various STEM organisations running interactive activities, with stallholders including tertiary institutions, government departments, small businesses, not-for-profits and charities. The festival featured a diverse range of fields covering more than 10 different areas of STEM, including activities that targeted a range of ages, from the 'littlest scientist' corner for young children to gaming technology for youth and resource management and sustainability for adults. I would like to congratulate the organisers of the Perth Science Festival on a fantastic event, with hands-on, interactive and engaging activities in STEM. This is the way to engage and inspire young minds to pursue paths in STEM. As someone with a background in higher education, I'm particularly passionate about ensuring that our young people have the skills they need when they leave school or university to find employment and to contribute meaningfully to society.

As the global economy changes, new industries are emerging and new skills are required for workers at all levels. As we continue to make advances in technology and automation an increasing number of jobs in the future will require STEM skills. Current stats and analysis show that 75 per cent of jobs in the fastest growing industries will require workers with STEM skills. Fifty per cent of current jobs with skills shortages are in STEM fields. It is predicted that demand for professional, scientific and technical services will rise by 14 per cent in the next five years. Employers expect their need for STEM professionals to increase by 49 per cent for university graduates and 53 per cent for VET graduates in the next five to 10 years. Ninety per cent of jobs will need digital skills in the next two to five years. Fifty-eight per cent of current students under 25 are studying for jobs that will be radically changed by automation.

In essence, what it is critical that we do now is ramp up our STEM capability across the country to ensure that we are educating people with the problem-solving, innovative, creative-thinking and digital skills which we increasingly need in society. To ramp up capability we need to ramp up interest, passion, enthusiasm and engagement. This is at the core of Science Week and was at the core of the activities in my electorate. These activities are a fundamental and vital part of the government's commitment to providing long-term, stable funding and policy settings for Australian science, research and innovation. We understand that science is critical to our continued prosperity, and we are building on and backing our policies with smart and strategic investments to deliver stable support for our researchers across the coming decade.

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