Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a scientist in a previous life I was very excited to be involved in the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Science and Innovation. I remain excited. It is very important to determine how to successfully transition a good technical or scientific advance to commercialisation. This inquiry into pathways to technological innovation, as the member for Kooyong has said, initially had as its focus the identification of issues that either assisted or inhibited the process of commercialisation. Unfortunately the identification of common issues did not eventuate. Where the commercialisation was successful, often no hurdles were identified, whereas for those that did not succeed it appeared to be all hurdles.

As the inquiry had to focus on other issues, I will focus on some of the recommendations made in the report. Before I do this I would like to make a general point about science and technology—that is, if we cannot get people to become involved in science and technology there will be no scientific or technological ideas to commercialise in the first place. This is a very important point to realise. A prerequisite to pathways to technological innovation is having innovators in the first place. We have a looming crisis in this regard in that the number of students in science courses is dropping, particularly in some of the basic or what are often called ‘the enabling’ sciences. We need to engage our youth and get them to see the area as exciting and something they wish to pursue.

The member for Lindsay spoke of engaging very young children in science. I agree that this is important, but I do not think that this is a critical issue. From my experience, children are actually natural scientists. All of us who have had kids remember the kids in the high chair. They will throw something out of the high chair—‘Oh, it drops. If I throw it out of the high chair again I wonder if it will drop again.’ There is that scientific process of conducting the experiment and then repeating the experiment to ensure that it is in fact repeatable. Children are engaged in these areas anyway.

The problem is that somewhere along the education track we are losing a lot of these students. In my experience the problem is keeping the youth interested and engaged through high school. Things such as the nuclear debate, wherever that may head, are actually engaging our youth in thinking about scientific and technological issues. We need to determine how to do these sorts of things on a sustainable basis and do it more consistently and more often.

In respect of recommendation 1, entrepreneurs and innovative thinkers are people who do not actually wait around for the right information to just turn up; they tend to aggressively seek it out and if it is not easily found they will go on and forge ahead without it. We saw cases of this during the inquiry. Some people referred to the success they had despite the fact that they did not know where, for example, to access money.

This inquiry gave us the opportunity to gauge the use of support agencies. Potential users of the National Innovation Council were having difficulty engaging the assistance that they required when they needed the advice. It is important that access to assistance schemes is easy, streamlined and best suited to the needs of the user and not in some form that is best suited to our view of the way that it should be accessed. If contact is to be made by the user and it is not seen to be helpful or timely, then assistance will no longer be sought.

From the National Innovation Council’s perspective, it is imperative to be contacted and to get it right, as it allows them to improve the services provided and builds important linkages. The benefit of this report is that it enables the National Innovation Council to be more proactive in getting to the people who require their assistance to promote their services. Hopefully, it will also provide the intersection between AusIndustry and the National Innovation Council to more effectively assist potential users who have not been aware of the service in the past.

Recommendation 10 is that the government provide support to the CSIRO proposal for an Australian growth partnerships program to engage small to medium enterprises in demand driven collaborations with publicly funded research agencies. We believe that this has merit and needs to be actively pursued. The reason is that these collaborations allow small and medium enterprises to have access to a research and development ‘punch’ that would otherwise not be accessible to them and would allow these smaller enterprises effectively to have similar wherewithal to that of larger companies.

Recommendation 11 is that the Australian government request the Business Industry Higher Education Collaboration Council to examine and develop the business case for third stream funding to universities. Third stream funding is an area that has been trialled in the UK and found to have significant benefits in terms of research and commercialisation outcomes. This funding makes research and teaching, the core businesses of universities, more relevant to society by funding universities to engage with society.

Recommendation 12 is that the Australian government introduce a funded cluster development program to encourage the Australia-wide development of clusters which bring together innovation in research, business and education. In a similar fashion to recommendation 10 on the CSIRO issue, this gives smaller enterprises a bigger bang for the research dollar.

In conclusion, this report is a good starting point regarding what we require to successfully commercialise science and technology. Clearly, however, we need to delve deeper into various aspects that have been drawn out in this inquiry. I commend the report to the House.

Debate (on motion by Mr Danby) adjourned.

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