Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I would very much like to thank the minister as she leaves the chamber for voting for my second reading amendment. It is rare that one moves second reading amendment in this place that is supported by the government. But to have the House carry the second reading amendment was indeed a pleasing day for the opposition. In this instance I shall not be moving a second reading amendment, tempted as I am to see how many second reading amendments can get past the folks opposite.

Labor supports this bill because it mirrors our commitment to establish Innovate Australia, an independent agency to guide the government's approach to innovation policy. It is a shame that the government has not adopted the comprehensive approach Labor took to innovation policy in government and has continued from opposition.

What this government is presenting as innovation policy is really just what you would get if you had googled '10 ideas to improve innovation in Australia'. It is a piecemeal approach, which is poorly thought through and shows little understanding of the realities of the role played by innovation across the economy—in established businesses, on shop floors as much as within start-ups and new tech firms.

The Industry Research and Development Amendment (Innovation and Science Australia) Bill 2016 amends the Industry Research and Development Act in two ways: it transitions the current Innovation Australia board to a new independent body called Innovation and Science Australia; and it inserts a statutory framework to provide legislative authority for Commonwealth spending activities in relation to industry innovation in science and research programs.

Labor supports this bill because it emulates Labor's commitment to establish Innovate Australia, an independent agency to guide government approach to innovation policy. We announced our policy before the election and we are very pleased that the Turnbull government has adopted it. Since Mr Turnbull became Prime Minister in September last year, the word 'innovation' has become de rigeur. After being banned under former Prime Minister Abbott, it is suddenly ubiquitous even in places where does not particularly fit.

Labor's approach not simply one of using buzzwords and catchphrases where it happens to suit the prime minister of the day. We set in place a 10-year innovation agenda in government, known as Powering Ideas. The Abbott-Hockey government in 2014 ripped more than $3 billion out of science, research and innovation programs and the much-hyped Science Agenda of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and then Industry minister Christopher Pyne restored less than one third of that funding.

The goals of Labor's innovation policy are tied up in our commitment to Labor values and in our understanding of the importance of innovation to social progress. The challenge of an effective innovation agenda is to reshape and focus the economy to create high skilled high-wage jobs of the future. That is why Labor, at the last election, announced investment of more than $1 billion in a suite of measures in science and research on top of our commitments in schools, TAFE and universities.

The need to foster a culture of innovation is why we cannot focus narrowly on start-ups. It is why at the last election we were committed to supporting 100,000 young people, especially women, studying STEM, by giving them a HECS discount on completion. It is why we were committed to a national digital workforce plan to expand the stock of ICT workers by 2020. It is why we were committed to a start-up year at universities so universities could develop their ideas, get business know-how and connect with finance. It is why we were committed to boosting the skills of 25,000 current primary and high school teachers to teach STEM. It is why we went to the Australian people encouraging the notion of getting start-ups to help solve government problems through challenge platforms and supporting start-ups to compete in government tenders. It is why at the last election we were committed to giving every child the opportunity to learn coding or computational skills at primary and secondary school, and to working with industry to establish a $9 million national coding in schools centre to develop the resources and expertise required.

There are particular problems that can be solved by somebody who codes. In my work at the Australian National University, I would use mostly Stata but sometimes SPSS or SAS in order to solve statistical problems. But the process of learning to code can also be important. Many gen Xers will remember their experience learning to code in BASIC—a language that has now largely gone the way of the dinosaurs but which provides the building blocks for rigorous thinking, for understanding randomness and the role that loops play, and for understanding the importance of step-by-step instructions and debugging. All of these are important skills for a range of careers in mathematics, science and engineering. So Labor's encouragement of coding was recognising that coding skills at the school level can provide a bedrock for science careers later on. It was in the same way that the Australia in the Asian century white paper proposed to allow every young Australian in secondary school to study a priority Asian language. Of course, you need the National Broadband Network for that. It is useful to have the National Broadband Network with fibre to the premises in delivering these initiatives as well.

By contrast, the record of the Abbott-Turnbull government has been cuts, cuts and more cuts. Since the 2013 election, the Abbott-Turnbull government's budgets have: abolished the Innovation Investment Fund, abolished Commercialisation Australia, defunded National ICT Australia, cut the CSIRO, cut the Australian Research Council, cut the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, cut from Cooperative Research Centres, cut from the Research Training Scheme, cut from Geoscience Australia, cut from the Bureau of Meteorology, cut from Defence Science and Technology Organisation, cut from Sustainable Research Excellence, cut from the R&D tax incentive, abolished the Enterprise Solutions Program, abolished Industry Innovation Precincts, cut the Australian Industry Participation plans, cut from the TCF co-investment programs, abolishing Enterprise Connect, and attempts to abolish ARENA and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. This cutting agenda is at odds with the government's stated goal of making Australia an innovation nation. Australia can only succeed as an innovation nation if we are able to invest in the skills and the jobs of the future.

Mr Hunt interjecting—

The Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, in the chamber, is part of a government which is making cuts in renewables investment. I have seen in my electorate of Fenner the benefits of the hard work that is being done.

See this speech in context