Julian Simmonds (Ryan, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a great pleasure to rise in the House to support the member for Higgins's motion, which quite rightly acknowledges what a success National Science Week was. With a $6.84 million investment from the Morrison government, we saw a very successful National Science Week held across 10 to 18 August. There were over 2,077 events around the nation as part of the week, and 1.5 million people participated in it to help promote science in our nation and how we are at the forefront of it.

The global economy is changing. We know that. We know that this means new industries are emerging and new skills are required. The majority of jobs in the future will require STEM skills, which makes Science Week an important priority for our nation. Applying STEM knowledge and skills leads to new products and technologies, more efficient services and systems, higher quality health care, enhanced natural resource management and better ways that our nation can be sustainable. In particular I wanted to come back to a few of these points, particularly the new products and technology and the higher quality health care. We heard the Labor members opposite talk about and lament how perhaps there isn't enough funding from the Morrison government going to science. They disregard in its entirety the fact that it was this government that instituted the Medical Research Future Fund, a $20 billion investment that is the envy of the world when it comes to promoting science and medical research in this country and globally. It puts us at the very forefront—and I know that for a fact because it's institutions like the University of Queensland, in my electorate, that are doing some of the research—of breakthroughs that are coming through in science and technology.

We also have not only the University of Queensland but also CSIRO's Queensland Centre for Advanced Technologies in Pullenvale. As I said, it will be the jobs of the future that are going to be in this particular area of STEM, in science, so a core part of Science Week is to make sure we're encouraging young Australians, the next generation, to take up the mantle of science and innovation research. Few schools—I want to say no schools but some of the honourable members in here might disagree with me—do it better than Mitchelton State School in my electorate. It was a great pleasure to visit the school and hear about all the activities they held for National Science Week, including their annual STEM competition. With the Science Week theme of 'destination moon', students had the opportunity to discover black holes, wonder about stars, build moon bases and explore how astronauts survive. They even had noted astrophysicist and cosmologist Dr Brad Tucker visit the school and talk to students about the universe, as well as a visit from Starlab, which is an inflatable planetarium—and, having gone in it myself, it is as fun as it sounds.

Over 300 students from the school participated in the STEM competition to show off their prowess and try and win the school prize, which was judged externally. All of the entries were exhibited during the open day and they had a real life science competition where they got to participate with the judges and do some science experiments. A particular congratulations goes to Alastair, who was the overall school winner. I had the pleasure to meet him and present his prize to him. His dad had a great time putting together their science project—overseen by mum, of course. And particular congratulations goes to the classroom teacher and STEM coach, Danielle Spencer, and principal, Chris Hart, who lead that program at that school.

In addition, I had the pleasure of welcoming Minister Andrews, our Minister for Industry, Science and Technology to the Queensland Centre for Advanced Technologies in Pullenvale and to visit a company called Emesent. Emesent have gone from start-up capital to creating 20 jobs in advanced manufacturing, science and technology in just over 12 months. They are doing leading research in cutting-edge drone technology that allows mining companies to safely map underground terrain without putting people at risk. The $160 million that the minister announced while she was there for the Manufacturing Modernisation Fund is a great example of how we are creating and funding jobs in the science and technology area so we can have and can continue to promote the jobs of the future in STEM.

As part of that, I had the pleasure of going to UQ with Minister Hunt to look at some of the genomics health work that is going on at UQ. This is cutting edge technology and— (Time expired)

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