Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Industry Research and Development Amendment (Innovation and Science Australia) Bill 2016. It is good to see a furious bipartisanship emerging in this parliament on innovation, because that is what we need. These ideas, this research and science and progress, last longer than any one government or administration here—certainly, at the rate we have been going through them in recent years—and probably outlasts all of our contributions in this House.

What we do need is a fairly long-term, bipartisan and consensus-based approach. We do see that. In 1990 the Hawke government established the cooperative research centres. Over 26 years some $4 billion has been allocated. Over that time 211 cooperative research centres have been established, and they have done wonderful things. In 2009 Labor had a national innovation strategy called Powering Ideas. In the last year we were in government innovation funds had grown to $10 billion; that was a 50 per cent increase over the time that we were in government. So Labor has a proud record in this area, and we intend to build on it when the Shorten government takes its place in this parliament. It will not be long now, given the way the current mob are going.

We are happy to support this bill because it does good things that will provide a framework for us to do things in government. As my two colleagues have observed, it largely mirrors Labor's policy approach in any event.

One observation I would like to make about innovation is that we have been very, very good in this country at talking about what we have missed, and very good at talking ourselves down. Often we adopt a whole series of myths about the fact, as is commonly said, that we are good at inventing things and bad at commercialising things. In a global world, with global supply chains, this is outdated thinking. It is really 1970s thinking. We really have to be better at selling ourselves, at backing our good ideas, at realising, as the shadow minister said, that we should be celebrating things that are happening here and leading the world here. In order to do that, we really have to celebrate our successes.

Last Thursday I was lucky enough to go to Australian Institute of Nanoscale Science and Technology. This was a building at the University of Sydney. It was funded with some $40 million to build it, funded in the last Labor government. It is an achievement that we should be very proud of. This institute will benefit the whole of Australia and will exist over many different governments of many different political persuasions. Regardless of our party identification we should be celebrating this Australian Institute of Nanoscale Science and Technology. It will undoubtedly make a huge contribution to science and research, not just in our country, but around the globe.

I have to thank the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Duncan Ivison, and Kirsten Andrews for organising the visit, and particularly the director of the institute, Professor Thomas Maschmeyer, Associate Professor Maryanne Large, Professor Zdenka Kuncic, Professor David Reilly and Associate Professor Michael Biercuk. As you can tell, they are from around the world, and no doubt the shadow minister will correct my pronunciation in subsequent speeches when he visits them. This institute and the people who work in it are really extraordinary people in an extraordinary facility, a world-beating facility which is working hand in hand with industry, in this case Microsoft, and doing it all from our international city, Sydney. I would recommend this document, The next giant leap is seriously small, to members. It is a very good document. I recommend that all members visit the institute. For those who think that these things do not have some effect on our everyday life or on other debates in this building, there are people with expertise in physics, chemistry, engineering and medical science, all working in the one building, all sitting around the one table and all interacting in research that really will change the world and industry.

One of the products they are looking at is super-strong steel. That has a very real application, I would imagine, to the Australian steel industry, where we have to add value and we cannot just be producing what is essentially now a commodity. We have to be adding value and we have to be using science and innovation in order to do that.

I would like to commend the institute for its good work and I commend the bill to the House. I hope that we have a furious bipartisanship in this policy area and that our differences in this area are small and our advances are very big.

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