Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that in Government, the Coalition invested significantly in research and development, including an estimated $4.3 billion in 2020-21 through the education portfolio;

(2) acknowledges that:

(a) Australia stands internationally as one of the highest performing contributors to foundational research, being responsible for 2.7 per cent of the world's scientific output, compared to being home to 0.34 per cent of the world's population; and

(b) in terms of research translation and commercialisation, Australian does not meet the same high performing reputation;

(3) further notes that the previous Government:

(a) agreed in February 2022 to a ten-year Research Commercialisation Action Plan to drive greater utilisation of research and collaboration with industry; and

(b) budgeted $2.2 billion to support its Research Commercialisation Action Plan to boost Australia's economic recovery, including:

(i) $1.6 billion for Australia's Economic Accelerator to establish a stage-gated program to support translation and commercialisation in the six National Manufacturing Priority Areas;

(ii) $243 million for the Trailblazer Universities Program to select universities to partner with industry to work on research; and

(iii) $296 million to support greater collaboration through 1,800 industry-focused PhDs and 800 industry fellowships over ten years; and

(4) calls on the Government to commit to implementing the Coalition's Research Commercialisation Action Plan in full and on-time, first with introducing legislation to establish Australia's Economic Accelerator.

Research commercialisation was a strong focus of the coalition government in our last term of governance. Why is that? In part it's because it goes to the heart of our economy, because when we do good research and we translate that into new products, new ways of doing things and new industries then we're growing the economy, we're creating new jobs and, ultimately, we're improving productivity. Indeed, it is one of the very few ways that you can improve productivity.

Australia produces excellent, world-class research. We punch above our weight in that regard. But we don't do as well in translating that research into commercial products. This was our main focus, which I was leading, in our last term of governance. For example, when you look at the number of papers written over the last 20 years, we've massively increased the number of publications. In 2000 there were 23,000 papers published by universities; by 2020 there were over 100,000 papers published. But when you look at the commercialisation metrics over the same 20 years, they had barely changed.

So what did we do? We took a very concerted effort to address this particular problem. We established an expert panel of 10 members—the most brilliant researchers, business minds and university leaders—who provided guidance to us on what ultimately became the package of measures which we introduced. That passage was called the Australian government's University Research Commercialisation Action Plan, released in February of this year. It lays out a comprehensive set of reforms to completely shift the dial in this area, unlike anything that had been done before. We backed the plan with money—$2.2 billion over the next decade—and we aligned the priorities around the six modern manufacturing strategy priorities, such that all of the initiatives and priorities of the government as a whole became those six modern manufacturing priorities.

The cornerstone of that plan was the $1.6 billion Australian Economic Accelerator. That's a 10-year investment in a competitive funding program where universities will, with their commercial partners, go through a series of stage gates. You start by applying for small amounts of money early on in the process, and gradually that amount of money increases as you get to stage 3. At stage 3 there can be contributions of up to $50 million made—they'll be done by CSIRO and they'll be done on an equity basis from them.

The second major element, which is already underway, is called the Trailblazer Universities Program. This was largely modelled off successful initiatives overseas, scaling up existing centres of expertise and industry collaboration. The aim was for these trailblazers to be world leaders in a particular area of focus—again, aligned with the modern manufacturing priorities—and that has taken off. We had so many fantastic applicants that we actually increased the number of trailblazer universities and the amount of money that we put in. Already, the results have been absolutely outstanding. Those six trailblazer universities that we supported have already established 170 industry partnerships, and more than 60 per cent of those partners are in small- and medium-sized enterprises. The trailblazers think they will create, through these initiatives, over 7,000 jobs.

On top of this, we supported more industry PhDs and more industry fellowships so that academics can make a whole career out of research commercialisation, just as they can make a career out of publishing pure research. We also reformed some of the other research programs to support this overall objective. We want our research to be terrific but we want it to be relevant for Australia and we want it to be translated into new products, new technologies and new industries. That's what this package will do. My call on the government is to get on with the job of putting the legislation through to implement the Economic Accelerator. I believe they support it. But just get on with it so that these universities can get on with the job.

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