Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is an important contribution today from both sides, and I commend the member for bringing this motion forward. We know how incredibly important it is for the rapidly transitioning Australian economy, but it's also important to acknowledge where Australia has come from. I think, over the last 10 years, we've been very tough on ourselves about the degree of commercialisation in Australia. It's quite frequently quoted as being among the bottom two in the OECD, which I think is quite an unfair measure, to be honest. If you look at exactly how commercialisation is calculated by the OECD, in many cases there is some consistency lacking. But you also need to remember that, for many decades, Australia has been an agrarian and commodity driven economy. It does mean that some of those sectors, particularly in agriculture and in the heavy trades in outer-metro Australia, didn't have CEOs and business leaders who were absolutely committed to commercialisation in the way that northern European and American businesses in medium- to high-tech manufacture almost automatically are. We have a different economic profile, and that probably explains why we're slightly lower than many other economies in the OECD on that commercialisation rate. It's not a lot lower and it's not a hurdle that can't be cleared over time. And over the last three years, as there has been recognition of that lower rate of commercialisation, a whole lot of programs that are in place now have been delivering results.

Let's be honest: anyone placed in the quite invidious position of trying to pick a winner in areas of commercialisation would realise just how fraught it is. I remember talking to an engineer in this space, who said: we can't even work out how many engineers we'll need in two years, let alone expect a government entity like CSIRO to be getting a 100 per cent strike rate with who it commercialises and who it doesn't. We have always said this is taxpayers' money and we want it to be spent responsibly.

As Daniel Kahneman points out in Thinking, fast and slow, there is a combination of the founder effect and the optimism bias, which means that in many cases across this sector there is a belief that we can be successful in commercialisation or getting a new entity going, when in reality we know that those numbers are actually far lower. There is often a complete dissonance between the views and the optimism of founders and the reality that they're moving into a space where they tend to overestimate their own skills, downplay the likelihood of luck and other factors, and not fully understand that there is not a consistent environment upon which you can pin how well you're performing. You simply don't know if rival technology is evolving, in some other part of the world, which makes what you're doing potentially obsolete. It is very challenging then for taxpayer dollars to be appropriately directed. All we can do is look at the money that is invested, particularly through CSIRO, and see what measures of success they can show. That may well be in market cap. It could be in jobs created. In all of those measures, Australia is doing very well.

In today's motion, I have some sympathy for the other side, who are absolutely right to demand the best possible results for Australia's commercialisation. It must feel for them today, after the weekend's election results, a bit like we are halfway through the movie Hangover, so to haul themselves back into this chamber to give it a mighty red-hot crack at Australia's commercialisation risk is, indeed, quite bold of them. They have done their level best but are not overly convincing as they delivered those concerns.

Australia is doing very well. There is no better than AstraZeneca's work, CSL's work. Even as recently as this week, there has been an announcement that we will be looking at manufacturing onshore a second vaccine candidate. While that, again, will be accelerated, it is not likely to start until the end of the year. As we look at all of these timelines, they are proving way faster than anyone could have thought of five years ago. Australia is agile enough to be able to meet those timelines and to be able to respond. That is really all you can ask from a commercialisation process.

Very briefly, because I know some of them have not been mentioned, there is nearly half a billion dollars in this year's budget for a range of innovation funds. The R&D tax incentive is obviously the backbone of what Australia does to make it as attractive as possible for businesses and entities to invest in commercialisation. Of course, every corner of this country has really good examples of it. Linda Paterson of Gutbiome Synbiotics, has a small operation but is a mum who has had a successful Boosting Female Founders Initiative grant out of the current government that will see her propel, we believe, into her next level with her very important work out of Birkdale Queensland. There is a range of those businesses around Australia. Australia's Modern Manufacturing Strategy as part of the recognition that, while we have always thought that manufacturing was on its last legs, we can absolutely see that, as a proportion of the economy, it may have declined slightly but its net size is still holding firm in a nation where our wages make it particularly hard to manufacture efficiently and competitively.

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