James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Higher Education Support Amendment (Australia's Economic Accelerator) Bill 2022. As has already been indicated by many of my coalition colleagues, we support this bill. It essentially implements coalition policy announced early last year by the former Prime Minister and built into the former Treasurer's budget. I'm particularly excited by the opportunity that this will have for a number of CRCs that I have been heavily associated with in my home state of South Australia because this legislation creates the Economic Accelerator Fund, which will create a range of commercialisation opportunities for the universities and their partners in a number of R and D initiatives.

Just before I was elected in 2019, it was a thrill to be at the announcement of SmartSat CRC, with the University of South Australia being the leading proponent of the CRC with its many industry partners in the satellite sector. This CRC was chosen to be a successful recipient of funding and since then has been doing amazing work in the smart satellite area. This bill will give them access to the Economic Accelerator for potential commercialisation projects through the partnerships that they have in the CRC. Since I was elected I've worked very closely with the University of Adelaide, my alma mater. They put forward a very compelling bid for the HILT CRC, the Heavy Industry Low-emission Technology Collaborative Research Centre. This CRC is all about finding ways to solve the significant challenges of intensive carbon emissions from heavy industry. These challenges are in steel production, cement, aluminium and the various industrial processes that, in some cases, we are yet to commercially solve in their attempt to become carbon neutral, carbon zero. That HILT CRC, led by the University of Adelaide and with an enormous number of industry partners, was successfully selected and funded. It is now absolutely in existence, and I hope and anticipate that the accelerator fund will provide opportunities for the commercialisation of concepts that potentially come out of that alliance.

The third one is the defence industry Trailblazer Universities Program, which Adelaide university, again, was successful in. We announced that last March-April, just before the caretaker period. The trailblazers program is inextricably connected to the economic accelerator concept; they're within the same overarching policy framework. The trailblazers program has been a competitive process across the six disciplines within the manufacturing strategic priorities. Adelaide university went in on the defence play and was successful in being selected.

This opens up enormous opportunities, particularly in my home state of South Australia, both because the University of Adelaide is based there and because we are the defence state. We have an enormous, deep defence industry capability within our economy. We also have the very significant commitments that the previous government made around defence acquisition, particularly in maritime, but there is a whole lot more than just shipbuilding happening in the South Australian defence sector, across land and air. Of course, we also have the Australian Space Agency, the headquarters of which the previous government decided to locate in South Australia. We are the home of defence industry and the home of space, with the SmartSat CRC at UniSA, as well. We are leveraging enormous opportunity in those sectors, which are only going to grow dramatically into the future.

The previous speaker talked about the priorities within the National Reconstruction Fund. The really frightening thing is that the space sector has been removed as one of the six priorities. That is absolutely inexplicable. Space, as a standalone opportunity, will be one of the great future growth industries across any significant economic metric—jobs created, investment attracted, innovation and the spin-offs from the space sector, space itself and space technology and what it can do for so many other industries, particularly traditional industries like agriculture, as an example. Earth observation from space can have huge applications in the agricultural sector. To take space away as one of the six priorities for the government's future manufacturing focus is inexplicable, really disappointing and a complete own goal. On most metrics, space should be and could be—and may not be now, thanks to that decision—the fastest-emerging growth sector in our economy, faster than any of the others. This is madness, but it's up to the government, in another debate, to explain why they've gone down that path.

The defence sector is not just about what it is but what it can be. One of the really important things, which was a real focus of our government previously, is the development of sovereign capability. We've always spent a significant amount of money on defence and defence acquisition, but for way too many decades the vast majority of that acquisition spend was on imported defence capability, rather than domestically constructed capability and—more importantly—not just piecing things together within our economy but actually having the sovereign capability to design, construct and hold the intellectual property for defence requirements here within our nation, which is good for our economy but also very important for our national security. We had defence industry sovereign capability as a focus, and that's why I was very excited when the University of Adelaide was selected to be a trailblazer in defence. Coupled with the economic accelerator program, that means that Adelaide university now has the partnerships. They're working with the University of New South Wales as well, I hasten to add. It is, of course, a very significant institution in defence; it operates the Australian Defence Force Academy here in Canberra, amongst its other defence related activity.

Adelaide university is the lead proponent, working with all of their very significant industry partners. That means that, through Trailblazer, they can be undertaking the research and development and capability development and focus. Then, through the Economic Accelerator, they can apply to this program, and this program will provide them with certainty, because of its ongoing nature, which is embedded within the legislation. They will have the capacity to identify and pursue, and, I'm very confident, on a regular basis, secure successful applications to this program. That will mean that—on top of what we're already doing in the defence sector in South Australia, and the things that we're already planning on building locally and the capability that is already known about in my home state—there will be new development and new innovation that we can commercialise for future economic opportunity, beyond what we already intend to do in South Australia and Australia into the future.

We know, of course, that, through the landmark AUKUS agreement, we are entering an unprecedented period of technological collaboration and cooperation with the United States and the United Kingdom—two very sophisticated defence industry and technology economies. Particularly in the case of the United States, it is, understandably, very, very rare for it to partner with non-internal academic and industry partners—those not within the sovereign borders of the United States. One of the regular challenges with defence acquisition is getting the approval to access technology that we might want from the United States government, and AUKUS provides a framework to make that much more expedited, on a regular basis.

There's a specific commitment within it, as we know, to nuclear technology propulsion for submarines. There are a lot of other opportunities within that.

I'll come back now to the Economic Accelerator fund. Adelaide university and their partners, through accessing this fund, will be able to look at partnership opportunities that might be facilitated within AUKUS. They'll be looking for opportunities to develop capability that could have significant opportunities, both economically and from a defence capability point of view, for our own needs and for the needs of significant ally markets like the United States and the United Kingdom, and of course well beyond that.

And that's what this fund will do. It will help us dramatically address one of the really heartbreaking issues in our history of research and development: that of not having, consistently enough, the C—the commercialisation—on the end of the R&D. There have been a lot of great ideas coming from our research institutions where we haven't had the best framework, of not just government but also, frankly, private sector financing of the commercialisation of good ideas that mean that great Australian IP can be turned into great Australian business opportunities that are attracting investment and employing people within our economy.

Whether it's in defence or in the HILT and/or space sectors that I mentioned—those two CRCs—in South Australia, all of our institutions will have opportunities to access this funding, working across all of the significant industries in South Australia—traditional industries, like agriculture and mining, and the great emerging exciting industries, like space, and everything in between. There are really smart people in these institutions and companies who are working in these sectors and have the capability to work on ideas and develop opportunities for businesses. Now, through this fund, they will have a very clear and certain pathway to seek and apply for staged funding that will help them germinate those ideas into really significant commercial opportunities, that, we hope, on a regular basis, will turn into great businesses that are employing people and generating activity in our economy.

So, for those reasons, the coalition—myself included—are very pleased to see the government bring forward our bill and continue with the proposals that we put forward when Prime Minister Morrison announced this last February, in February 2022. So, a year later, we have this bill progressing through the parliament. I'm pleased to support it and I'm excited about the opportunities that it will provide for the Australian economy and, particularly, the very impressive research and development community that we have.

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