Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

The coalition supports the Higher Education Support Amendment (Australia’s Economic Accelerator) Bill 2022, which is, in great part, the reintroduction of the measures introduced by the former coalition government. We'd led a significant piece of work to review our government's significant investment in research to drive even greater benefits for our economy. And, yes, we do know that while we undertake world-leading research and publish more than 100,000 academic papers, we certainly need to do a lot more beyond that initial exploration and translate that into commercial applications to meet some of our greatest challenges.

This will not only highlight Australia's incredible research minds—and they are incredible—but will also provide a boost to our productivity and create new jobs and new industries. The translation element that we introduced was a key component of our $2.2 billion University Research Commercialisation Package, and it outlined a number of key initiatives by placing national manufacturing priorities at the core of Australian government funded research by using priority driven schemes to ramp up commercialisation and deliver university research funding reform to strengthen initiatives for genuine collaboration with industry—this is a key part—and by investing in people who are skilled in university and industry collaboration.

We had a number of elements to our actual plan in that bill. The Trailblazer Universities Program was to boost R&D and drive commercialisation outcomes. There was Australia's Economic Accelerator. There was funding—$150 million—for the CSIRO Main Sequence ventures program to back start-up companies and help create commercial opportunities for Australian research. There was investment in 1,800 industry PhDs and 800 fellows over 10 years as part of that, and a new IP framework for universities to support greater university and industry collaboration—and that is the key, that industry and university collaboration. And even providing what industry needs, and will need ahead, was part of the collaboration.

We had identified a number of priorities in what we put forward, from medical products to food and beverage to recycling and clean energy, resources technology and critical minerals processing, the defence industry and, of course, that critical element of space.

The next element was investment in Australia's Economic Accelerator, which this bill essentially is about today, and making the provisions to support our universities to commercialise what is really world-leading research. We designed the program around initial proof of concept, through that valley of death where projects are at greatest risk of not proceeding through to commercial realisation.

I want to touch on the $150 million we committed to the CSIRO's Main Sequence venture. But, in looking at that, I want to go back to some of the things Australians have done well throughout history, to look at some of the wonderful minds we have, the creative minds both formally and informally, in our universities and beyond. I go back to the stump-jump plough, which was really innovative technology in its time. It was a great piece of gear. There are simple things like the Hills Hoist. And we've got a local bloke in my part of the world, Terry Torr, who invented a wonderful drain spinner that did an enormous amount of work. He was just a bloke who was fixing a problem. We had the Marshall and Roesner super spreader that has been really critical for the agricultural sector.

In Australia, we look at how good we are and how good our researchers and scientists are in this space. Australia is world-leading in quantum computing and IVF, through the Monash IVF program. We look at how good we are in the environmental space with solar cells, the world's first e-waste microfactory and the polymers to clean up contaminants.

In the medical field we are such leaders in this space, from Gardasil vaccines for cervical cancer through the University of Queensland to nanopatch production for vaccines. We've seen innovations just one after the other in Australia. Look at the black box flight recorder. That came out of Australia. It was invented by an Australian scientist, as was spray-on skin from Professor Fiona Wood, from Perth in Western Australia. Look at the incredible effect this had on burns victims. Through this amazing work and innovation, she was credited with saving 28 lives. Another Australian doctor and physicist worked on the electronic pacemaker.

There is the platform for Google Maps—we often don't celebrate enough how good our researchers and our scientists are. There was the medical application of penicillin and, something basic for all of us, polymer banknotes. I'm really proud of the cochlear implant. I think all of us in this House and around Australia would be particularly proud of this Australian device and where it's got to and how it has changed people's lives.

Who would have thought that something as simple as the electric drill was invented and created in Australia? And who can forget Ben Lexcen's winged keel that helped Australia II win that classic America's Cup in 1983. It was all done and created and developed in Australia, like Wi-Fi technology through the CSIRO and the ultrasound scanner. So many of these, particularly in their early stages, came through universities. There is even the plastic spectacle lens—things that we don't think about. It's scratch resistant. It was the first one and was made in Australia and created in Australia.

There are all sorts of wonderful inventions that have started in Australia, but we need to do even more in this space. I just wonder, with all of these things we see on the list that I have just touched on—it's just the tip of the iceberg—what have we missed out on that we haven't commercialised? This bill is important so that we create that connection and improve that process so that we don't miss out on even more innovations and opportunities in Australia and so we provide the platform for other budding scientists and young people who are going to solve so many problems. We look to foster those young minds and researchers, and just simply say to them, 'What problem is it that you want to fix?' because they will have a lot of answers to the problems and the issues that we are facing.

We saw through our extraordinary investment in the Medical Research Future Fund and the grant recipients there that they were mostly universities. So these recipients, the universities, have translated their research into commercialisation in Australia. We were particularly proud as a coalition of introducing and creating this Medical Research Future Fund, and I can look at all the universities and the extraordinary research that has benefited from that particular fund. When I look down the list, there is everything from research and investment into the commercialisation around Australian brain cancer help, there was cardiovascular help, there was dementia and aged care and ageing projects and programs. For me, personally, there is endometriosis research that's looking for that cure for all of those women who are affected by endometriosis in Australia, not only to introduce that first ever national plan but the endometriosis research that is so critical because there is no cure.

To go on from endometriosis, the investment from our amazing Medical Research Future Fund into research around epilepsy, MMD, Parkinson's, various cancers and, even yesterday, into ovarian cancer and coronary heart diseases, genomics. There are so many other areas that benefit from the Medical Research Future Fund. This constant investment in research and then translating that into commercialisation is a critical part of what we need to keep investing in and showing confidence in.

The Medical Research Future Fund is an enduring legacy of the coalition government for the benefit of all Australians. It sees university research funding actually translated into better health outcomes for Australians, as well as commercial results for Australian companies and individuals.

The CSIRO Innovation Fund, launched by the coalition in 2016, led to the creation of what we see here, the main sequence ventures, which led to over 60 company collaborative projects with universities. That's a great outcome. The additional $150 million that we allocated to that in February 2022 was focused on accelerating and commercialising the manufacturing priorities I spoke of earlier.

The AEA program will keep working to attract projects with high commercialisation potential, and that's a really critical part of what we will see through this bill. I am really looking forward to seeing what research is actually commercialised as a result of this investment. We will see more of that as this investment is realised, in the knowledge that research takes time. But I think that very close and strong dedicated involvement not only of the universities and their researchers but with industry and business will really focus the investment, not only on the greatest commercialisation potential but also where the greatest benefit for the Australian community and economy is in a broader sense.

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