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

I thank the member for Moore for his question. I know that he is working closely with Edith Cowan University on the commercialisation of research, and Edith Cowan very recently announced that they have made a tremendous collaboration with the CRC for Mental Health, the cooperative research council in Perth, and a business in Perth called Cytox that is working on a cure for dementia. Of course dementia is a disease that affects far too many Australians—hundreds of thousands of Australians. It is a disease that, while it was evident decades ago, has become very common now because of the changes in the age of our population. It has affected most families—in fact my own mother-in-law has dementia, and it is a shocking, shocking disease. It affects whole families, especially those who stay home to care for people with dementia.

The work that Edith Cowan University is doing with Cytox and the CRC for Mental Health is very important work, and it is a very good example of the kind of research commercialisation that can happen with collaboration between universities and business. It is exactly the kind of thing that the Australian government wants to encourage with its Innovation and Science Agenda in December. It is something that we do not do nearly enough of. We have very high-quality research in Australia but, while we are sixth in the OECD for the quality of our research, we are 33rd in the OECD for the commercialisation of research. We are getting one part of the equation very right and the other part of the equation not very right. We want to work with universities through the Innovation and Science Agenda and with the business community to create the kind of commercialisation of research that will lead to jobs and to growth. The commercialisation of research will be a significant part of the four themes of the innovation and science agenda.

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