Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let me say at the outset that I appreciate the consideration extended to me from the other side on the Pathways to technological innovation report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Science and Innovation. I am under a time constraint, and I do appreciate being able to juggle the order a little. In the chamber, when the report was being introduced, I spoke about the need to develop an entrepreneurial culture in this country. Innovation, as I see it, is the development of ideas, certainly the transference of technology, through to the commercialisation of the process. Essentially, that is the basis upon which successful countries have been able to articulate their innovation into action and ultimately into the economy. It is a little late in the day to simply sit back and wait for a good idea to materialise, hopefully get a lucky break and crack the market.

One thing we found throughout our hearings was that, unfortunately, not all our best ideas made it to the marketplace. One reason why that has occurred is that it is not necessarily just scientific and engineering knowledge that supports a good idea into the marketplace; it is largely the development of the entrepreneurial skills to be able to support innovative content. We should not simply wait until people graduate from university to try and instil that culture. Quite frankly, that should be extended from schooling onwards. Therefore—as you would recall, Mr Deputy Speaker—one of the findings of this committee is that this should be engendered in our society very much from the earliest years, looking to develop innovative content but also with a view to looking at the skills necessary to make something happen; not just to dream something up but to make it happen.

Innovation is not entirely based on the ideas, as I say—it must be looked at in relation to its commercial possibilities and its impact on society, business and the economy—but basically it is the transition of good ideas into a commercial process. In its report, the committee looked at the issue of entrepreneurial skills. The committee effectively acknowledged the importance of entrepreneurial skills to innovation, the transfer of technology and the commercialisation process. Evidence to the committee indicates that there has to be a fundamental reform in our thinking in that regard. As I said, it must become very much a cultural shift. Quite frankly, it is stooped in our education system. Therefore, in the opinion of the committee, it requires a whole-of-government approach. Given that there is a very clear link between entrepreneurship and innovation, for this country to match the global efforts of our competitors or at least to maintain our productivity and economic wealth, we need to be out there promoting the development of a cultural shift, and a culture of entrepreneurship must be consistent with all that.

We found fostering a culture of entrepreneurship to be a critical step in improving this country’s pathways to innovation. It does not fall to any one group to do that, whether it involves innovative support mechanisms, education systems or business as a whole. Quite frankly, it is probably something that does require a whole-of-government approach in order to coordinate a policy link to assist in that regard. So formulating a program by which government can assist such a cultural shift and engender a more entrepreneurial culture requires the expertise of all those who assist in the development of our students, not only in schools but also in universities.

Throughout this inquiry much was made of the fact that we are simply not encouraging people into sciences or engineering, and that some of the people leaving school do not have the maths ability to be able to cope with those areas. But that comprises only one leg of this argument. Certainly, we do need to encourage our kids into sciences and into engineering, and schools play a significant role in preparing kids for those areas. But if that is all we are going to produce, and we fall short on the issues of commerce and business development skills, I am afraid we are still going to be exporting our most valuable resource—that is, ideas. We do not just need to be able to conceptualise our ideas; we need to be able to shift those ideas into the marketplace. The committee addresses this point in recommendation 5, where it says that a whole-of-government task force should be established to investigate a suite of appropriate policy program measures to foster a natural culture. I think it is important that we do see innovation as more than just hatching a good idea and that we look at the process that is involved.

On that theme, one of the things that the committee did notice is that there is certainly a lack of data available for us to be able to assess the level of business skills that we have. Despite the fact that our business skills and our entrepreneurial nature are critical to the development of commercial innovation, we found that there was very scant material available in terms of business and commerce graduates. That type of material does not appear in the Australian science and innovation system annual statistical snapshot put out by the Department of Education, Science and Training. The committee recommends that that be addressed. We think that the department should look very clearly at how we assess business and commerce graduates to make sure that we do have the requisite numbers. Without knowing that sort of data, we are not going to be totally successful in promoting this partnership that we would like to see eventuate between those in engineering and sciences, those who are going to conceptualise ideas, and those who are going to be out there with a view to commercialising those ideas for the benefit of business and of the Australian economy. In recommendation 4, the committee recommends that that data be captured and assessed by the department.

Innovation is about growth. It is certainly the basis upon which growth can occur not only in a business but also in the economy. Innovation is therefore more important as we attempt to compete as well as extend our position within our region and within our marketplace. Internationally, innovation policy has become the key element of industry policy and is, surprisingly, seen as the main factor driving productivity and in turn economic growth. The path to international innovation or competitiveness in this country, quite frankly, can only be through those innovation processes. This government has presided over about 49, I think it is, consecutive monthly trade deficits. (Time expired)

Jackie Kelly (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the chair of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Science and Innovation, the member for Kooyong, for giving me his time here this morning because I am required to speak in the chamber. I appreciate it very much. As always, Mr Georgiou, in chairing the committee, was extremely helpful, assisting all the committee members. I really enjoyed this committee inquiry. Although I did not get to as many of the meetings as I would have liked to, I tracked it through Hansard because it is something of critical interest to me in my electorate, particularly the chapter of the report on ‘human capital—knowledge and skills’. I would like to refer to three recommendations, Nos 3, 4 and 5. I would particularly like to emphasise recommendation No. 5:

The Committee recommends that the Australian Government establish a dedicated whole-of-government taskforce to develop a series of measures targeting the early development of entrepreneurial skills in the education system (including the early school years) and the broader community. To inform the development of these measures, the Committee recommends that the taskforce draw upon the expertise of educators, researchers and industry specialists.

A bit of an indication for me, in coming to that conclusion with the committee, was my work with the Children’s Discovery Museum in Western Sydney. The Children’s Discovery Museum is actually an American concept. It is functioning in most American cities bar Washington, where, on my last study trip, I found that the Children’s Discovery Museum had in fact closed. But there is severe competition in Washington with the Museum of Natural History and the whole mall of incredible educational institutions. But in Sydney, our state capital city, we do not have those same options, and even less so in our other state capital cities around the nation.

So how do you capture young people’s imagination and interest in science and encourage them to see that there is a job at the end of it? That is the critical thing, and that is why I have been a big supporter of the Children’s Discovery Museum concept, which initially will target just primary schools so that we are stimulating, capturing and keeping primary school children interested in science so they will then take it on into secondary school. I notice from the submission by the New South Wales Department of Education and Training that they are also interested in this key area and the drop-off in high school of students continuing with science.

One of the key ways to address this would be through a science centre like the museum running the curriculum so that the New South Wales education curriculum comes out through the science centre. Science classrooms, which are incredibly dull, have not changed since we were at school, Mr Deputy Speaker—the old Bunsen burner, the picture of anatomy on the wall showing muscles, a few veins and things; it is still exactly the same—whereas most of the other classrooms have really progressed with what I call the ‘Discovery Channel of learning’. Take music: it is so fantastic, with the rock eisteddfods that go on; there is just so much that young kids can do in that line of entertainment. Take sport: my parents were always telling me to get out of sport because there was no future or career in sport. I would never suggest that to a young person. You can certainly have a great a career in sport and afterwards in sports management.

But, with science, the children do not see a job at the end of it. We really need to make that connection, that there is a job at the end of it, and you would encourage that with this science centre. You would look at placing it adjacent to research facilities, having universities involved, and then having a clustering of industries around that, piggybacking off the research that is happening. Kids who go there in primary school could look to high school, to university, to clubs and associations, and to social activities and see a career and a future with Merck Sharp and Dohme or a number of the other companies that gave submissions to our committee.

It is interesting that a lot of companies made comparisons between Australia and other countries and I think it is important to pick up on those. This might sound like a particularly female point of view—and I am glad that the member for Mackellar and a few other women are present in the Main Committee with me—but recently at the Penrith markets I bought some shoes for $12. They are delightful shoes. All of my girlfriends compliment me on them; they are fantastic. But, if the fellow at the markets who sold me those shoes was making a profit, what on earth is China producing these shoes for? I have lost my local television manufacturer. It could not land the cathode ray tube for the television into Australia for the price at which China delivers the whole television set into Australia. I have lost a number of other manufacturing jobs in my electorate.

We need to be on this end of things. We have targeted health and health services as particular areas where we would like to see innovation and reward for future jobs, employment and wealth generation in Australia. I was talking to one of my constituents today who is involved with the private health industry. They would like to see trade missions overseas by our health minister saying: ‘Hey, come and have a look at Australia. We’re leading in this area.’ We could target the wealthy area within Asia and say: ‘If you are going to undergo a medical procedure, Australia is the place to have it done. We have this expertise; we have the people who can do it.’

As we lose our manufacturing industry and move to other industries, we can only go ahead with those sorts of sales programs internationally if we have the appropriately skilled people here. Hence, recommendation No. 4 is to get an expanded snapshot of what is happening in our education facilities. How many students being educated and gaining degrees in Australia are going overseas? Foreign students, to start with, were never going to stay here, but how many Australian graduates also leave Australia to work overseas? What are the workforce participation rates of our science, engineering and technology graduates? We need to look at these critical issues to see where they are going. Firstly, we are training fewer of these graduates and, secondly, those we are training are either shooting overseas or not practising in their fields. We have to enhance people’s ability to see job pathways or ways forward to create, through innovation, their own jobs in their own industries.

One particular statistic which I love that I often use with my primary school kids is that 60 per cent of them will be working in a job that does not exist yet. After these kids get through high school or university, they will work in a field that does not actually exist yet. That is what this report is all about. How do we find and, I suppose, pick winners in innovation? How do we find areas that will go ahead and then really target the human capital—the knowledge and skills—required to take those areas forward and bring them to fruition in terms of successful companies, whether or not they get listed on the Stock Exchange, that will create jobs in Australia for up and coming young Australians?

It was a very important committee process—the public hearings and the report—for me to be a part of, given the work I have done with the Children’s Discovery Museum and the concepts that they have worked through with the New South Wales education department. They are actually looking at moving forward, and the federal government has actually funded a feasibility study for them. They are looking at about three or four sites for the Children’s Discovery Museum. One is the Parramatta Civic Place opposite the Riverside Theatre, a place identified by the Parramatta City Council. This was a very bipartisan committee, and this is a bipartisan move by the councillors of Parramatta, the councillors of Penrith, who put forward Penrith Lakes, and the New South Wales government, who put forward the RTA lands at the intersection of the M7 and the M4.

So there have been a number of options put forward in a bipartisan manner by the Labor and Liberal proponents of this idea. I think it has tremendous legs. This committee report goes further, saying that it is a very good idea. My Western Sydney colleagues and I will certainly be pursuing with the government some really concrete outcomes from this committee inquiry. Again, my congratulations go to the chair; he did an outstanding job, as always—and I thank him very much for allowing me to now go and do my duty in the other chamber. I commend the report to the House.

Petro Georgiou (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—Can I say what a pleasure it is to participate in this debate on the report of the Standing Committee on Science and Innovation with the member for Lindsay, the member for Tangney and the member for Werriwa. It was a very bipartisan committee. Before I launch into the guts of what I have to say, can I also say, on behalf of the committee: we all send our good wishes to the deputy chairman, Mr Harry Quick, the member for Franklin, who fell ill during the report’s finalisation. I understand he is on the mend, but we do send him our thoughts.

Earlier today the Standing Committee on Science and Innovation tabled its report Pathways to technological innovation. This is a significant report in terms of assessing the current support provided across the multitude of pathways leading from innovation to commercialisation. In its call for submissions to the inquiry, the committee defined innovation as:

… the path of conceiving, developing and implementing ideas through to the generation of products, process and services.

Most importantly, the committee said:

It gives economic value to a nation’s knowledge.

The end of the 20th century has been characterised by a further opening up of the world economy and the growth of knowledge based economies. In this environment, innovation is critical to enhance productivity, economic growth and global competitiveness. There is an increasing recognition of the importance of innovation to securing Australia’s future economic growth, environmental sustainability and social wellbeing.

In recognition of the importance of supporting innovation, the Australian government has committed substantial sums of money—billions of dollars—under Backing Australia’s Ability, with a notion of enhancing our innovative and commercialising capacity. This has been a major investment. There have been a number of reviews, and the reality is that there is a substantial commitment; nonetheless, given the importance of innovation to Australia’s long-term economic performance, there is always room for improvement. The inquiry identified that there are areas of concern regarding the capacity of Australian business and research agencies to innovate.

When the committee undertook to inquire into pathways to technological innovation, it sought to bring together a series of successful innovations and look at the obstacles they faced in commercialising research, with a view to making recommendations to the government. I have to accept responsibility for this approach and I also have to say that it was a little bit simplistic, because life was not like that. From discussions with researchers and entrepreneurs and from the case studies, it became apparent that this attempt would only provide part of the picture.

The evidence that came through to the inquiry showed that many successful innovators experienced a smooth pathway to developing their products and finding markets, and these experiences affirm the strength of Australia’s innovation systems. But one of the difficulties that we discerned fairly quickly was that the people who were successful tended not to see the impediments in their path. Having been a state director of a political party, I can say it is a bit like running a successful campaign: you tend to forget all the things that went wrong in the course of it and focus on the bottom line. This came over quite strongly in our discussions with entrepreneurs, innovators and scientists. But the reality is that, in addition to these submissions about positive case studies, the committee did hear a number of stories about innovation that was hampered because of gaps in the innovation support system.

The reality that became apparent was that some pathways to innovation are well developed and relatively smooth for the Australian entrepreneur or the innovating business, and other pathways are less well formed. The committee has spoken to government agencies, researchers and businesses about where knowledge is needed, what difficulties are experienced and how support might enhance the pathway to innovation. From this process, Australian innovators themselves identified a number of consensus issues. The report seeks to address these concerns.

The key issue for the inquiry was the difficulty of defining and measuring innovation. Once again, the reality is that the complexity of a concept or a process is resolved in the first instance by fairly crude and rigid definitions—or at least clear and rigid definitions. As greater insight is gained into the process, the definitions and concepts become more and more fuzzy rather than more and more clarified. This was an interesting insight into what was happening. Essentially, the notions of innovation and commercialisation have become broader. I think it is important that the system is capable of dealing with a high degree of ambiguity, because the simple truth is that it is a complex process and we do not completely understand it in any template form. In my view and I think the committee’s view, far from being a criticism, the general reluctance to impose an iron cage on the innovation process is a very real tribute to people’s ability to deal with ambiguity and the fact that there are many sources and many processes of innovation.

As with the concepts, the notion of metrics in the system is quite complex. Metrics are essentially arbitrary determinants of how you measure innovation. We have had the generation of a significant number of metrics, and all of these are problematic in seeking to establish the level of innovation because, by and large, they all measure correlations rather than causes. They are about inputs rather than outputs. Once again, I have to say it is a compliment—partly because I may be a rigid personality myself—that the system has gained the capacity to say that the indicators are only indicators and we cannot impose them as final arbiters of what we fund and what we measure. Especially when governments are involved, I think the capacity for open-endedness is a tribute rather than a concern. But there are a number of indicators, and we do quite well on some and not so well on others.

What came through clearly—and there was no dissension on this—is that there is a need for greater business skills and entrepreneurship in the area of technological innovation. The resolutions that people put forward were, however, quite different. There is the classic problem of making a good researcher into a bad businessman. Once again, here it is important that, while pushing more knowledge into the system, we respect the fact that there are no templates in this. The recommendations of the committee, especially in this area, are in some respects reasonably open textured, which I think they should be.

The fact is that, when you are dealing with a complex area, the program structures are necessarily also complex, and complexity means that they are difficult to access. That was one of the problems that we encountered. The recommendations of the report go not so much to making the system rigid but to making it more accessible by providing greater information about it and by providing greater assistance to innovators to access the system. Here, again, there is a recognition of this complexity on the part of departments and, to a degree, they are trying to address it. We just think that there should be a greater focus on this.

This was an important and I think complex review. I do not want to pretend that all the recommendations are freestanding and do not require more work, because that would be incorrect, but I think that the committee had the insight to realise where it could make very definite recommendations and where it could say that more work was needed. I commend the report to the House.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a scientist in a previous life I was very excited to be involved in the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Science and Innovation. I remain excited. It is very important to determine how to successfully transition a good technical or scientific advance to commercialisation. This inquiry into pathways to technological innovation, as the member for Kooyong has said, initially had as its focus the identification of issues that either assisted or inhibited the process of commercialisation. Unfortunately the identification of common issues did not eventuate. Where the commercialisation was successful, often no hurdles were identified, whereas for those that did not succeed it appeared to be all hurdles.

As the inquiry had to focus on other issues, I will focus on some of the recommendations made in the report. Before I do this I would like to make a general point about science and technology—that is, if we cannot get people to become involved in science and technology there will be no scientific or technological ideas to commercialise in the first place. This is a very important point to realise. A prerequisite to pathways to technological innovation is having innovators in the first place. We have a looming crisis in this regard in that the number of students in science courses is dropping, particularly in some of the basic or what are often called ‘the enabling’ sciences. We need to engage our youth and get them to see the area as exciting and something they wish to pursue.

The member for Lindsay spoke of engaging very young children in science. I agree that this is important, but I do not think that this is a critical issue. From my experience, children are actually natural scientists. All of us who have had kids remember the kids in the high chair. They will throw something out of the high chair—‘Oh, it drops. If I throw it out of the high chair again I wonder if it will drop again.’ There is that scientific process of conducting the experiment and then repeating the experiment to ensure that it is in fact repeatable. Children are engaged in these areas anyway.

The problem is that somewhere along the education track we are losing a lot of these students. In my experience the problem is keeping the youth interested and engaged through high school. Things such as the nuclear debate, wherever that may head, are actually engaging our youth in thinking about scientific and technological issues. We need to determine how to do these sorts of things on a sustainable basis and do it more consistently and more often.

In respect of recommendation 1, entrepreneurs and innovative thinkers are people who do not actually wait around for the right information to just turn up; they tend to aggressively seek it out and if it is not easily found they will go on and forge ahead without it. We saw cases of this during the inquiry. Some people referred to the success they had despite the fact that they did not know where, for example, to access money.

This inquiry gave us the opportunity to gauge the use of support agencies. Potential users of the National Innovation Council were having difficulty engaging the assistance that they required when they needed the advice. It is important that access to assistance schemes is easy, streamlined and best suited to the needs of the user and not in some form that is best suited to our view of the way that it should be accessed. If contact is to be made by the user and it is not seen to be helpful or timely, then assistance will no longer be sought.

From the National Innovation Council’s perspective, it is imperative to be contacted and to get it right, as it allows them to improve the services provided and builds important linkages. The benefit of this report is that it enables the National Innovation Council to be more proactive in getting to the people who require their assistance to promote their services. Hopefully, it will also provide the intersection between AusIndustry and the National Innovation Council to more effectively assist potential users who have not been aware of the service in the past.

Recommendation 10 is that the government provide support to the CSIRO proposal for an Australian growth partnerships program to engage small to medium enterprises in demand driven collaborations with publicly funded research agencies. We believe that this has merit and needs to be actively pursued. The reason is that these collaborations allow small and medium enterprises to have access to a research and development ‘punch’ that would otherwise not be accessible to them and would allow these smaller enterprises effectively to have similar wherewithal to that of larger companies.

Recommendation 11 is that the Australian government request the Business Industry Higher Education Collaboration Council to examine and develop the business case for third stream funding to universities. Third stream funding is an area that has been trialled in the UK and found to have significant benefits in terms of research and commercialisation outcomes. This funding makes research and teaching, the core businesses of universities, more relevant to society by funding universities to engage with society.

Recommendation 12 is that the Australian government introduce a funded cluster development program to encourage the Australia-wide development of clusters which bring together innovation in research, business and education. In a similar fashion to recommendation 10 on the CSIRO issue, this gives smaller enterprises a bigger bang for the research dollar.

In conclusion, this report is a good starting point regarding what we require to successfully commercialise science and technology. Clearly, however, we need to delve deeper into various aspects that have been drawn out in this inquiry. I commend the report to the House.

Debate (on motion by Mr Danby) adjourned.