Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. So we have a real issue in this country. We do absolutely want to increase business collaboration between industry and higher education, and we can look to the Global Innovation Index for answers, because it shows us that there are 81 indicators that feed into a multifaceted program that boosts innovation—things like human capital; focusing on education in the early years; focusing on child care so that women can go back to work; focusing on improving competency in maths, reading and science in our 15-year-olds; and looking at how we can access better skilled workers in the knowledge industry and how we can actually take those ideas and then diffuse them through the system.

So innovation is a lot more complex. It is multifaceted, and that is why we as a government are taking a multifaceted approach to actually boosting innovation. We are investing in the early years; we are investing in our teachers with a national action plan that will be delivered by the end of this year; and we're also setting up a university accord. This is how you tackle a complex problem: with complex, multifaceted solutions.

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