Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party, Minister for Industry) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question. I know that she is a passionate supporter of science, of research and of innovation and education. Last night we had the opportunity to recognise the outstanding talent that we have in this country in science, in research, in innovation and in science teaching at the Prime Minister's Prizes for Science. Many of those who were recognised last night were here in the gallery earlier in question time today. I don't, unfortunately, now have the opportunity to acknowledge every single one of them but I would like to recognise Prime Minister's Prizes for Science awardee Professor Cheryl Praeger AM, from the University of Western Australia. Professor Praeger has had an extraordinarily distinguished career in applied and pure mathematics. She is internationally acclaimed and much of her work are things that we now deal with each and every day, from secure banking through to accurate internet searches. The science and mathematics that she has done are used, as I say, not only by all of us but by industry as well, and her work is an excellent example of industry and researchers collaborating.

This government is committed to making sure that we build our strengths with science and research collaboration, because we know that when industry and science collaborate it is much better for industry. They do grow, they do innovate, they are able to maximise profitability, they're able to build our economy and they're able to create more jobs. So we are committed to making sure that we are building the connections between science and industry.

Those in this House would know how passionate I am about STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths—and about making sure that we get more women into the STEM disciplines, so I was especially encouraged to see that last night we had record numbers of women winners being recognised in the Prime Minister's Prizes for Science. In fact, five of the 10 recipients were women, which is an outstanding achievement—and that includes the top prize. They were all selected on merit. They were all outstanding recipients of the Prime Minister's prizes.

I would like to recognise the outstanding achievements of our science teachers. They are so important in encouraging our young people to develop a lifelong love of science, which sets them up for great futures because 75 per cent of the jobs of the future will require STEM skills.

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