Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

He is very reliable. We are focused on our intellectual capital as well as our physical infrastructure. The government spends $9.7 billion on research and development across government. So we are doing our part. But while Australia is ranked sixth in the OECD for the quality of our research, it is ranked 33rd out of 33 for commercialising research. So we have a lot to do, and we will be building on the initiatives of the former Minister for Industry, Mr MacFarlane, around industry growth centres, Cooperative Research Centres and the Entrepreneurs' program to bring about new initiatives very soon that will create the incentives to commercialise ideas and embrace risk in this country, which is an important cultural change.

Alan Joyce, the CEO of Qantas, understands that. He gave a speech to the National Press Club yesterday and he said: 'Technological innovation, our capacity to lead it and our capacity to embrace it, even when it is disruptive, will be the prime driver of long-term growth.' He is absolutely right, and we are fortunate to have a Prime Minister who is utterly focused on innovation, on research, on science and on ensuring that we commercialise the great ideas that Australian researchers produce but are not yet commercialising, because it leads to jobs and it leads to growth. In our economy in the future, this area, like start-ups, will be driving jobs and driving growth, and I look forward to explaining some of those initiatives over the coming months.

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