Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] Labor clearly will be supporting this bill. However, I foreshadow that my friend and colleague the member for Whitlam will be moving a second reading amendment.

It's good to finally get here to discuss this bill, the Designs Amendment (Advisory Council on Intellectual Property Response) Bill 2020. It seeks to implement some of the recommendations of the 2015 Advisory Council on Intellectual Property report. Here we are in 2021 looking at what was done back in 2015, at the work of that council, which basically aimed to provide more flexibility for designers during the early stages of getting registered design protection.

I think it's worth noting the time line of the legislation, for the sake of the House. Nearly 10 years ago the council was tasked by the previous Labor government with investigating the effectiveness of the design systems in stimulating innovation by Australian users, and the impact the design system has on economic growth. That was in 2012, for the sake of full detail. Then, in 2015, the council made a series of recommendations, the first of which stated that the Designs Act should be amended as soon as practicable. Commissioned to do the investigation in 2012, the council came down with a report in 2015 that said that the work should be done as soon as practicable. The council report also found a clear need for increased harmonisation with international practices and recommended a number of other changes. Those changes included: compulsory examination for renewed designs, removal of the option for the publication of designs as an alternative to registration, and reintroduction of an opposition process. The report also identified clear scope to improve design protection, including the introduction of a grace period to protect against inadvertent disclosure of a design, which is an important mechanism itself. So, in 2012 a report was commissioned; in 2015 they reported; by March 2016 the coalition responded to the report, rejecting just one of the 23 recommendations made by the council; and here we are, well past the middle of 2021, finally legislating these changes.

It just reflects the complacency, the she'll-be-right attitude that's become the hallmark of the coalition in government. The pace of innovation might be quick on the world stage, but it's certainly not reflected in anything the coalition does when it comes to legislation or action with respect to innovation itself. This is yet another example of that. You can trace it in almost every other instance where there's legislation designed to support innovation in this country. It has taken an extraordinary length of time to get to a point where the draft legislation is brought to the House and then responded to and put in place, in terms of legislative action, by this government. Always, the only consistency is delay and failure to act, and we really can't afford that on an international stage, where so much is occurring, where technology is being applied through the thought and consideration given by designers to attend to problems, to boost productivity, to boost economic growth, and to improve the life of communities across countries and different parts of the world. Yet again we are seeing that only lip service is given to innovation by the coalition. There is no structured, rigorous view about how innovation will be utilised for the sake of national priority, national action and national benefit. What we are seeing right now is yet another instance of delay applied by this government.

Since 2013, the coalition government has had six industry ministers—and I note that the minister responsible for this legislation hasn't even bothered to actually give effect or speak to this in the House. There've been four departmental name changes and 250 days without any minister at all. Again, to say that the coalition doesn't care about Australian industry or the innovation that it generates is simply an understatement. Innovators, designers, businesses and industry rightly want their intellectual property protected. The design and related sectors contribute nearly $70 billion annually to our national economy—that's almost four per cent gross of domestic product. With the right policy settings and financial environment, Australian ideas will not only grow, they'll thrive, contributing more to our economy, creating jobs now and into the future, and improving the quality of life in this country.

Since becoming the shadow minister for industry and innovation, I've had the distinct pleasure of meeting incredible Australian innovators who have used their skills and smarts to address gaps in the market or, again, to meet needs in the broader community. For example, in February, the member for Bean and I visited a fantastic local Canberra startup, Goterra. Its founder and CEO, Olympia Yarger, was a local agriculturalist who saw a need and decided to do something about it, using native fauna to deal with the issue of waste. In 2016, Olympia had an idea to reimagine waste management by repurposing food waste to produce protein. She and her team developed an innovative robotics technology platform to create controlled environments that encourage insects to consume biological waste and create high-value, low-impact protein and soil. The carbon footprint of managing food waste with Goterra's method is 97 per cent lower than landfill and better than composting, and her efforts were actually recognised in the Australian's list of top 100 Australian innovators. I commend in particular David Swan from the Australian who put that list together that highlighted the range of innovative firms that have emerged in the Australian environment. These are ideas that are locally driven, supported and making a difference in ways that people think need to occur not just now, for our own sake, but in the longer term, into the future.

Further, in my own area, in the electorate of Chifley, we are home to one of the largest civil precast concrete manufacturers in Australia, Humes, part of the Holcim Group. In March, I visited their Rooty Hill operations to get an update on how they're going and the challenges they're facing as an Australian manufacturer. They create prefabricated concrete tunnelling of up to three metres in diameter, with a service life of nearly a century. Actually, it's over a century, I should point out. While I was there, Humes showed me where they've incorporated automation and new technologies in traditional manufacturing practices. They have a 130-strong workforce, many of whom live locally and who have been with the company many years. They're doing tremendous work in our part of Western Sydney and are proud contributors to Western Sydney manufacturing.

I also had the chance, with the member for Eden-Monaro, to meet with Tim and Kyran Crane, the founders of Ocean2earth in Merimbula. Ocean2earth are taking recycling waste very seriously, particularly in the area of marine waste, looking for new uses for this waste that would previously have gone into landfill. Their innovations are transforming marine waste products and compost. They collect that marine waste and transform it into premium recycled gardening products, and they're looking to expand that nationwide, creating jobs and contributing to the global war on waste. Their processes, which use the same amount of energy that is used to power a lamp, pump air into waste that is then broken down and transformed. It is truly remarkable work, and the Australian government should be doing more to support people with big ideas, like Tim and Kyran.

I also had the opportunity to visit the University of Newcastle's I2N innovation hub in Williamtown, with the member for Paterson, Meryl Swanson, where I got to meet a number of new firms supported through the university. Diffuse Energy, led by Joss Kesby and James Bradley, build some of the world's most powerful, small wind turbines, designed to service customers with off-grid energy requirements. Their turbines have a diameter of less than a metre and a service life of roughly 20 years. MGA Thermal showed me their brick technology that can store energy generated from heat in a safe and easy-to-use way. Dr Antony Martin of Hone Ag explained to me and Meryl Swanson how their technology can do time tests on the chemical properties of crops—a process that used to take weeks now shortened considerably. These were just some of the firms we met while on that visit. They've got some terrific innovations that the Hunter and the rest of the country can be proud of.

I also had the pleasure, with the member for Dobell, of visiting a firm in Tuggerah called Bioaction, headed up by CEO Larry Botham. They specialise in the design, manufacture and installation of systems to help eliminate hazardous and corrosive elements in our wastewater system. They've done that in quite an imaginative way on the Central Coast. They're working with many local government authorities and utilities across the country, deploying renewable organic resources and natural minerals that harmonise and populate nature's natural microorganisms to destroy contaminants and to debase compounds. They are doing terrific work right there on the Central Coast, with approximately 15 employees. Again, these are Australian ideas and Australian know-how that are able to do things that are different. They are making a difference, creating jobs and improving the quality of life for Australians. I just want to congratulate them.

On the issue of research and development, I think, sadly, that the coalition doesn't believe enough in Australian ideas to properly invest in them. Today's Australian investment in R&D is below that of countries such as South Korea, Iceland, Slovenia and Singapore. The cuts that started in 2014 with the abysmal Abbott-Hockey budget have seen impacts on Australian researchers, innovators and industry, who have all been suffering since. For evidence of the government's neglect, you need look no further than the 30 per cent decline in business research and development in the seven years prior to the pandemic. The government likes to tout its Modern Manufacturing Strategy, but the manufacturing industry is one of the biggest users of the R&D tax incentive. The government's continual underinvestment in R&D jeopardises Australia's manufacturing future and, importantly, the jobs it creates.

You notice now that the government boasts quite regularly about a '$2 billion injection' into R&D. You need to realise that this injection is nothing more than a reversal of nearly $2 billion in cuts that they had proposed and taken to the last federal election and had had to commit a backflip on when even those in their own party rebelled against what was being put forward as a 'reform' of R&D. To have the coalition now claim that they have injected $2 billion, when this is really a reversal of the cut that had been proposed, is quite obscene and offensive to those who fought against this cut that had been touted for quite some time. But, again, this is emblematic of the Morrison government. They're there for the announcement or the re-announcement or the spin of a cut that had been proposed by them some time ago, but they're never ready to do the meaningful work to support Australian ideas and business. After the last budget, they gave themselves, as I said, a huge pat on the back for their almighty backflip on cuts to the R&D tax incentives, but they shouldn't have undertaken this in the first place. A government that believes in Australian ideas would never contemplate such a cut.

My colleagues and I on this side of the House do lament the missed opportunities for innovators and businesses forced to leave Australia and the jobs lost because of the government's failure to act in the last five years. Since coming to government in 2013, the coalition has overseen the permanent loss of over 50,000 jobs in Australian manufacturing. Now, in the lead-up to the election, Mr Morrison will have the final say over funding decisions on $800 million worth of manufacturing grants. I can imagine the coloured highlighters and spreadsheets are being rolled out in preparation for decisions to which a lot of people would question whether or not merit has been applied. A lot of people would also question whether the government has applied political priorities to decision-making regarding the support of grants in this area. Again, this reflects the nature of the Morrison government, which has undertaken sports rorts, road funding rorts, regional rorts and car park rorts. Now we are genuinely concerned that they will use the same approach in making decisions around manufacturing grants, which simply should not be occurring. We should be ensuring that, coming out of the pandemic, any effort to revitalise sovereign capability and reduce our reliance on global supply chains is done in a way where government funds are used within a merit based system, considering the needs of Australian industry and engaging with it wholeheartedly—not in a way that furthers political interest for the coalition, but rather in a way that has the national interest at the centre of decision-making.

We have seen, as a result of the failure to prioritise innovation and to back Australian ideas, threats of funding cuts. The way in which the RDTI had been managed put a chill in investment, particularly around areas of software development. It's no surprise, then, that if you look at the Global Innovation Index Australia's standing in that index has fallen three places since 2018, from 20th to 23rd. Australia produces fewer innovation outputs relative to its level of innovation investment, despite the fact that Australia ranks sixth according to the quality of its universities.

If you look at all those issues, and the challenges confronting us, it is simply stunning that we have had reports that have driven the creation of legislation like this and that it has been dragged out; it was first committed to in 2012, the report was produced in 2015, the government response to that report was produced in 2016, and it is only in the second half of 2021 that we are looking at the legislative arrangements to give effect to that work. The failure to prioritise cleaning up design laws sends a strong message to innovators, designers, manufacturers and businesses alike that the Morrison government simply doesn't value Australian ideas and know-how and is certainly not on the side of Australian innovators.

The government's own explanatory memorandum states:

The objective of the intellectual property (IP) rights system is to support innovation by encouraging investment in research and technology in Australia, and by helping Australian businesses benefit from good ideas.

Labor supports Australian ideas and Australian know-how. On the side we believe in Australian ingenuity. We know we've got the brightest minds and the best ideas. We know proper government investment in research and development will not only grow Australian businesses but also boost jobs. But, after eight long years, it seems those opposite cannot be convinced of the value of Australian smarts unless it can be distilled into a three-word slogan or an opportunity for political advancement of their own interests.

This is not just about investing in Australian ideas; this is about investing in Australian jobs, Australian businesses and Australia's future. That is why, in his budget-in-reply speech, Anthony Albanese announced that a Labor government would offer 2,000 students what we refer to as a start-up year, to provide those students with the opportunity to partner with an accredited university accelerator to turn their ideas into future businesses. These are new ideas, new firms, new jobs and new growth that we are championing through the start-up year. Labor is confident in the potential of those ideas, particularly from young Australians, to grow new firms looking at ways in which we can reinvigorate Australia's business sector after the pummelling it has taken and the challenge that has been put on it by the pandemic.

In addition, Labor's $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund is designed to help support industries to get on their feet, to boost existing ones and to support the emergence of new ones as we come out of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also looks to support economic activity and industry growth in regional Australia and to attend to the challenges of Australian underemployment, where wages growth has stagnated and where people feel that the quality of jobs on offer is not helping them meet what they want to achieve in their lives. As indicated earlier, if we are to reinvigorate Australia's sovereign capability and reduce our reliance on global supply chains, we need to have a serious investment in Australian industry. That is why the $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund proposed by Labor intends to back Australian ideas to lead the way in our economic recovery. We also want to see more Australian ideas make it on the global stage: instead of our importing the work, ideas and know-how of someone else, backing local creativity and ingenuity because it transforms businesses that can compete in international markets.

We know that innovation, research and development are essential for economic growth, job creation and industry expansion. We want to ensure that in years to come we still have a reason to stand in this place and debate a bill such as this that seeks to protect the intellectual property of Australians. But to do that requires meaningful, long-term government support for R&D in this country. Only Labor can be trusted to be on the side of Australian manufacturers, researchers and innovators.

Again, I note that the member for Whitlam will be moving on behalf of the opposition a second reading amendments. I indicate that Labor will be backing this bill.

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