Senate debates

Wednesday, 3 February 2016

Questions without Notice

Innovation and Science

2:40 pm

Photo of Simon BirminghamSimon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Back for his question and his longstanding interest and contribution to innovation and education policy—and, indeed, the contribution of many of his colleagues, especially from Western Australia. As the Senate is well aware, the Prime Minister together with Minister Pyne launched the government's National Innovation and Science Agenda on 7 December last year. The Turnbull government is providing an additional $1.1 billion over the next four years to support research collaboration, to incentivise innovation and entrepreneurship and to reward and encourage risk-taking. This is building on work, particularly undertaken by Dr Ian Watt, who undertook a review of research policy and funding last year. A number of Dr Watt's key recommendations were taken up in the innovation and science agenda.

One of those important recommendations was to drive greater research industry collaboration through new research block grant funding arrangements for universities, which will reward industry and end-user engagement by those universities. This responds to the fact that we are, as a nation, in the top 10 globally when it comes to our research effort—a fact we should be proud of; unfortunately, we are amongst the bottom of the nations in the OECD when it comes to business collaborating with research institutions.

The Turnbull government are providing some $127 million as part of our package here to reward university engagement with industry and to assist the transition of those universities to new arrangements, particularly in relation to block grant funding. We are going to encourage improved collaboration and focus on research that directly benefits Australians and, of course, ultimately leads to the creation of more jobs and opportunity in Australia. And responding to the business feedback, we are changing the process for Australian Research Council linkage grants to an open, year-round formula to ensure that there is greater opportunity for business to engage with universities at a time that best suits them.

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