Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The opposition certainly support the Australian Research Council Amendment Bill 2008 being read a second time, and we lend our support to the measures contained within the bill. In essence, it alters some of the funding arrangements that are supported through the ARC to help foster high-quality research activity as part of Australia’s national innovation system.

As the second reading speech outlines, there are three key measures in this bill. The first is the establishment and resourcing of the Rudd government’s election commitment Future Fellowships. The second is the introduction of a new method of indexation to existing amounts that have been appropriated in the act. The third is to add an additional year to the financial forward estimates that already accompany this bill and were established and resourced during the Howard government years. The coalition supports each of those provisions.

The ARC’s role is to administer those appropriations under the bill and to identify the priority areas for the allocation of research assistance. The bill in effect adds $326 million, being a new fourth year, to the funding and also to the Future Fellowships program. The Australian Research Council’s primary purpose is the administration of around $600 million in grants annually to the Australian science and research community, and this bill provides the mechanisms for that to occur.

The coalition, the former Howard government, had a proud record when it came to science and research in Australia, and it is pleasing to see that this measure by the Rudd government simply carries forward and builds upon the positive work of the former government. In the Howard government’s 2001 white paper Backing Australia’s ability: an innovation action plan for the future,funds available to the Australian Research Council for science and research grants were doubled from roughly $300 million per annum to around $600 million per annum. While the Rudd government and Labor may claim that this bill appropriates $950 million for science and research, in reality about $600 million of it is merely a continuation of the coalition government’s policy.

So the clarity that needs to be brought to this bill is not only that it is a step in the right direction but, more importantly, that it represents about the only positive thing that the Rudd government has done in the area of innovation and in research and development. It needs to be contrasted, I think, with the very worrying and short-sighted decision that saw the axing of the $700 million Commercial Ready program. That was a devastating blow to many people who found it not only an enormous surprise but a new impediment that they had to overcome to take innovations that had got to a proof of concept stage—that is, proven to do what it had been hoped they would do—into a commercial ready stage where they could be taken out into the commercial world and have that proof of concept innovation applied with a view to generating wealth and opportunity for our country.

That $700 million cut to the Commercial Ready program has hit hard even in my own community, where companies involved in the information, telecommunications and communications area were doing all that was asked of them. They were achieving all of the benchmarks, fulfilling all of the requirements and making all of the progress that was expected of an innovative firm to take a concept, prove its functionality through that proof of concept stage and then to present its work to the government to see if support could have been available through the Commercial Ready program. With the abandonment of that program, a number of firms in my electorate are wondering where they turn to. We have been actively trying to assist them with other avenues of support. The work and the quality of it is something that was admired and valued by the previous government, but now we get to this Commercial Ready void. Taking that next step from validating an innovation and a new technology past that proof of concept stage into its commercial readiness position is an added challenge and burden. On top of that, the $63 million that has been ripped out of the CSIRO and the trimming in ANSTO as well as, in the area of my responsibilities, the changing of the tax treatment for software depreciation—all of those things—send a worrying signal about innovation.

I note the Deputy Speaker raising his eyebrow. Thank you for that eyebrow-lift, Mr Deputy Speaker Adams. This bill is positive in that it is a positive contribution to the innovation, contrasted and, I suppose, juxtaposed with the things that are not so flash and have taken some of the wind out of the innovation sail of our country and our economy.

The thing that the opposition is very interested in is the fact that these carefully ‘fully costed and funded’—I think that was the term before the election—initiatives around Future Fellowships actually come in at a figure quite different from what Labor said they would prior to the election, so perhaps ‘fully costed and funded’ was a slogan rather than an accurate validation of the estimates. But the funding is there for those new Future Fellowship programs. For those with an interest in those programs, that would see funding made available for what I think would be characterised as mid-career research experts—funding that provides for salary as well as on-cost and support for the host institution. We are quite optimistic that that will be a very positive step in the right direction. Those scholarships will be allocated against priorities that are to be established by the ARC. We in the opposition look with interest to see how those scholarships will in fact be targeted, how the ARC will formulate and articulate those priorities and the extent to which the scholarship allocations truly reflect those priorities.

That is all ahead of us, and we look forward to seeing how that new scheme will perform. It will provide new opportunities for mid-career researchers of significant ability to undertake important research here in Australia. It recognises the connectedness between the research professional and the host institution and provides funding for both. I think that is a positive step in the right direction, with resources available for the host institution and for things that might not be immediately apparent such as relocations of a scientist—where not only is there research funding to support their salaries and their endeavours but the infrastructure that is needed to carry out that work is supported—and very practical things such as relocation expenses where there is a need for that. We think that is all encouraging news. We are hopeful and optimistic that the potential of that measure will be met and that those ARC priorities will be clearly articulated and reflected in the allocation of those scholarships, and we wait with interest to see the success or otherwise of the Future Fellowships program in action.

The opposition lends its support. We view this as a non-controversial bill. We hope this is an early sign of a change of attitude in the government to a positive disposition towards innovation rather than those hostile cuts and actions that have been taken through the budget. We lend our support to this bill and encourage the parliament to have it passed speedily.

James Bidgood (Dawson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian Research Council Amendment Bill 2008 will provide funding to the Australian Research Council to support research schemes. It builds on the government’s commitment to an education revolution in Australia to support our nation’s best and brightest in research and in the development of their skills and their expertise in Australia, securing our nation’s future. Future Fellowships funding is open to all universities, medical research institutes and other publicly funded research agencies, including those in regional areas such as Dawson.

As the Committee is aware, my seat of Dawson has an excellent university in the Central Queensland University, with opportunities in applied science, engineering, education, business, health, informatics, communication and human movement sciences. This scheme is surely good news not only for the university but for prospective researchers there as well.

The fellowships will provide opportunities for mid-career researchers—that is, researchers at a pivotal point in their career—to further their careers in Australia. Mr Deputy Speaker Adams, as you know, over 11 years the Howard government failed to support Australia’s top researchers and as a result created a roadblock to innovation and productivity. The Australian people, for 11 long years, were used to a government that had core and non-core promises and core and non-core election commitments. But keeping our election commitments is something that we on this side of the Committee are very proud of.

Education, training and getting the most out of our best and brightest are things we are very proud of. Specifically, this bill will, firstly, provide funding for the future fellowships; secondly, apply indexation to existing appropriation amounts in the act; and, thirdly, create an additional out-year financial forward estimate. Fourthly, the Future Fellowships program will offer four-year fellowships, valued at $140,000 a year, to 1,000 of Australia’s top researchers in the middle of their career. Surely this has got to be really good news for our research community. Fifthly, at least 10 per cent of federal Labor’s Future Fellowships places will be targeted to encourage outstanding Australian researchers currently based overseas to come home to Australia, which is a measure to alleviate the brain drain of our best and brightest which occurred as a direct result of the attitude towards this issue by those opposite for 11 very long years.

The higher education sector is anticipating the commencement of Future Fellowships from early in calendar year 2009. This bill provides funding for the Future Fellowships scheme. The government’s Future Fellowships plans build on Labor’s plan to double—that is right, double—the number of Australian postgraduate awards available in our universities by 2012. Labor understands that overseas experience is important for our researchers, but it is unacceptable that our best researchers are being forced to stay overseas to do high-level research which is adequately supported and with no incentive to lure them home. So Future Fellowships will be targeted at researchers working in areas of national priority such as renewable energy, manufacturing technologies, the sciences, medical research and education.

The Rudd Labor government is committed to supporting high-quality research in Australia. This program is keenly anticipated by the Australian research community and is being delivered, as promised, within the first 10 months of the Rudd Labor government. I commend this bill to the House.

Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia is positioned to become a vital player in one of the world’s most economically dynamic regions. But, to stand out, we must have a strong research base. The government have shown our commitment to a research revolution as part of our education revolution. We cannot let ourselves fall behind the rest of the world in investment research any longer. That is why we are providing more funding to the Australian Research Council to support research schemes. We are investing in schemes that will support our best and brightest mid-career researchers and will strengthen Australia’s position in the global research arena. We have committed almost $175 million to introduce the Future Fellowships program, funding fellowships worth $140,000 each, with each researcher’s institution to receive a $50,000 grant to support the purchase of related infrastructure equipment for their research projects. This new Future Fellowships scheme is part of the Rudd government’s education revolution and is keenly anticipated by the research community. The fellowships will provide opportunities for mid-career researchers—that is, researchers at a pivotal point in their career—to gain further career experience in Australia as our future research leaders. We want to keep our best and brightest here in Australia.

The fellowships will also provide the capacity for the best researchers coming to Australia to conduct research, which is critical for building domestic research capacity. The promotion of research is vital in areas of critical national importance and that is why incentives must be put in place to retain research in this country. We understand that overseas experience is important for researchers, but it is unacceptable that our best researchers are being forced to stay overseas to do high-level research which is adequately supported and, up until now, with no incentive to lure them home.

I want to tell a little story about a dear friend of mine who also happens to be related to the member for Werriwa. It is a school friend of mine whose name is John Cusick. John went to the University of New South Wales, where he did a chemistry degree and went on to get first-class honours in chemistry. John tried to look for work in Australia and, like many people who finish their degrees, he could not get any and was encouraged to do his PhD. He did his PhD at the University of New South Wales, doing groundbreaking research in his field of organic chemistry. Following the completion of his PhD, again he looked around for work in this area but there was nothing to keep him here in Australia. He travelled to the United States and worked at a university in South Carolina for a few years with his wife. But, like many young couples, they wanted to start a family and they wanted to do so in Australia, so there was a desperate need for Mr Cusick to find work back here in Australia. This is someone with a first-class honours degree in chemistry, followed by a PhD in groundbreaking work that had commercial applications. The United States system was happy to take him and to develop his ideas—Australian ideas—for the benefit of the American economy, but not Australia. So he ended up coming back to Australia and decided, as he was a very bright man, that there was no future in continuing in his field in Australia.

As someone who has a law degree, I do not like to deride the profession that much, but Mr Cusick went on to do a law degree—and God knows we have enough lawyers in Australia at the moment! We do not need our best and brightest scientists not being encouraged to stay in this country to do their research and instead choosing to go to law. I know that he is a great success at Mallesons, where he is practising as a senior associate, but we have lost in Mr Cusick someone we should not have lost in terms of research that could have happened. And his story is typical of this area. If we do not put the funding in to make sure that our best and brightest in our key areas are encouraged and retained then we are going to lose them to other countries and to other jobs, because these are bright people who can work in any area that they set their mind to.

Future Fellowships is targeted at researchers working in areas of national priority, such as renewable energy, manufacturing technologies, the sciences, medical research and education. Importantly, preference will be given to those researchers who can demonstrate a capacity to build collaboration across industry and research institutions and with other disciplines. At least 10 per cent of the government’s future fellowships will be targeted to encourage outstanding Australian researchers currently based overseas to return home. Again, this is exactly where Mr Cusick would have fitted in.

These fellowships are part of our 10-point plan that places research and researchers at the centre of a national innovation system. This plan includes strengthened investment in creativity and knowledge generation; focused business R&D incentives to promote global competitiveness; accelerated take-up of new technology, so that Australian firms have access to the best ideas; support for international research partnerships and collaboration; strengthened publicly funded innovation and research infrastructure; improving industry access to the expertise of our universities and research agencies; and encouraging cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional collaboration.

This government is committed to building the national innovation system and, over time, doubling the amount invested in research and development in Australia. We will bring responsibility for innovation, industry, science and research into a single Commonwealth department. We are developing a set of national innovation priorities to sit over the national research priorities. Together, these will provide a framework for a national innovation system, ensuring that the objectives of research programs and other innovation initiatives are complementary.

The Rudd government will abolish the previous government’s flawed research quality framework and replace it with a new, streamlined, transparent, internationally verifiable system of research quality assessment, based on quality measures appropriate for each discipline. These measures will be developed in close consultation with the research community. We are also addressing the inadequacies in current and proposed models of research citation. This government’s model will recognise the contribution of Australian researchers to Australia and the world.

We will give priority to the training of the next generation of researchers and nurture the talents of researchers at all stages of their careers. The Rudd government is committed to attracting and retaining high-calibre researchers in Australia. We are reinvesting in research infrastructure, establishing a ‘hubs and spokes’ model of research cooperation between universities and other research agencies to promote excellence, while providing access to the best possible facilities for the greatest number of researchers. We will reduce the fragmentation of our national research effort, build on our research strengths and encourage greater collaboration between researchers and research institutions.

The government is also committed to the concept of peer review; to funding compacts with universities; to the guarantee of academic freedom; to the independence of the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council and other research grants agencies; and to reducing red tape and unnecessary interference in university research matters. Labor has long recognised the need for research funding agencies to coordinate their efforts more closely in order to deliver the best research outcomes in areas of critical public need, such as Indigenous health and climate change.

Our plan, which we have started to put in place, is to revitalise our public research agencies and replace the culture of short-term commercialisation with an emphasis on public research and support for long-term sustainable economic growth. We are bringing forward the statutory review of the Cooperative Research Centres Program and removing the restrictions imposed by the Howard government that the Productivity Commission has identified as a brake on the effectiveness of the CRCs. The current government recognises the importance of basic research in the creation of new knowledge and the value and breadth of Australian research efforts across the humanities, creative arts and social sciences as well as the scientific and technological disciplines.

In my electorate of Dobell, on the New South Wales Central Coast, I have recently been visiting many schools and have been impressed by the bright young students who are studying on the Central Coast. Our education revolution will help these young people realise their goals and dreams. They too will have the opportunities to join the country’s research community, attracted by the sorts of incentives that the government is putting in place to make a research career in Australia worth while. This is part of the Rudd government’s education revolution. It is why we are putting computers into schools. It is why we are having trade training at schools.

I was recently at St Peter’s Catholic College at Tuggerah, on the Central Coast, and was able to see firsthand the benefits that computers in schools are delivering to that school, how well received by the kids and teachers those computers are and how they are changing the way in which the students gain access to educational resources.

I was at Blue Haven Public School last week, where I talked to the primary school kids about their ambitions and what they wanted to achieve out of education. I was able to sit through a wonderful concert put on by them about the rock-and-roll history of our nation and the world. It was a wonderful experience to see such bright kids. One of the problems we have on the Central Coast is that we have very low retention rates—some of the worst retention rates in Australia—of people going from year 10 to year 12. That is why it is so important that the Rudd government is committed to the education revolution at all levels of education—to make sure that our kids get the right opportunities. Blue Haven Public School, on the Central Coast, is the type of school that this education revolution is aimed at.

I also had the good fortune of being invited to address year 12 students at Tuggerah Lakes Secondary College, The Entrance campus, last week to talk about the sorts of aspirations they have, where they want to go and what they want to study. It was timely because they are four weeks out from sitting for the Higher School Certificate.

On the Central Coast in the electorate of Dobell we have a unique tertiary education model in the Ourimbah campus of the University of Newcastle. Just by coincidence, the pro-vice-chancellor of that campus is visiting parliament today. The reason the University of Newcastle’s campus is unique is that it combines with a TAFE college and a community college to provide many pathways in education for young Australians, particularly young Australians from the Central Coast. It was pleasing to be informed by the pro-vice-chancellor last week, while we were sitting having a chat about the Rudd government’s great initiatives in education and higher education in particular, that the Ourimbah campus has seen a 17 per cent increase in enrolments in its TAFE, university and community college courses. It is because of the particular model it has that it has been able to attract them. The good news for the Central Coast is that the vast majority of the people enrolling come from the Central Coast, which has not always been the case with that campus.

It is clear why this campus is the favoured choice for young school leavers in the region, with its unique TAFE and university systems coexisting in an academically stimulating environment that offers enhanced research resources such as large libraries, which are not always available at TAFE colleges. Hundreds of young people who have graduated from the Ourimbah campus have gone on to great careers. The Rudd government is doing a great deal to create the right incentives for these students of the present to become the top researchers of the future.

The Australian Research Council Amendment Bill 2008, which I am supporting today, will increase spending on research by $942.9 million over four years. This is an appropriation bill which will provide funding to the Australian Research Council to support the research schemes that I have outlined. The bill provides foundation funding for the establishment of the 2008-09 budget measure Future Fellowships, which was an election commitment—and, as the member for Dawson pointed out before I rose to speak on this issue, this government, unlike the previous government, honours its election commitments.

The Australian Research Council advises the government on research funding and policy and, through its management of the National Competitive Grants Program, promotes the conduct of research and research training that is of the highest quality for the benefit of the Australian community. The ARC is the primary agency responsible for administering Australian government competitive funding for research in universities. In 2007 and 2008, it administered a budget of $595.8 million for the National Competitive Grants Program, accounting for 9.5 per cent of the almost $6.4 billion Australian government financial assistance for science and innovation in that year.

The National Competitive Grants Program consists of two elements: discovery and linkage. Within these elements are a range of funding schemes to provide a pathway of incentives for researchers to build the scope and scale of their work, and for collaborative partnerships. The National Competitive Grants Program’s funding is allocated competitively on the basis of research excellence and determined by peer review. Competition allows the identification and targeting of financial support to those activities that are likely to deliver outcomes of the highest quality.

The ARC is the only Australian government agency that has the sole role of supporting research and research training across the broad spectrum of research, from the sciences and engineering through to the social sciences and humanities. In this way, the ARC has a watching brief on the state of Australian research within and across all disciplines. It is able to support multidisciplinary approaches to finding solutions to important research questions that are increasingly problematic rather than discipline specific. It administers national infrastructure and Australia’s participation in international ventures, such as the Gemma telescopes and the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program.

All of this is part of the Rudd government’s education revolution that starts at preschool and goes all the way through to researchers who are mid-career, as is dealt with in this bill, to retain them here in Australia so that the Australian economy can benefit from their great research.

Going back to last week, another of the schools that I visited was Tumbi Umbi High School, where I participated in the year 10 interview program. What we did there was sit down with year 10 students and pretend that we were employers. We assisted them in terms of how they prepare for jobs and work in the community and also encouraged them about future careers and staying at school, which I mentioned earlier in my contribution today as being absolutely vital. Again, to reiterate, on the Central Coast we have very, very low retention rates between years 10 and 12, and this coordinated education revolution that is linked and all-encompassing is so vitally important for electorates like my own that struggle to get people to continue in education and have better prospects for their lives. It is particularly important in electorates like my own to have all levels of education there, from preschool through to university campuses, to make sure that all of these are actually linked together.

The Australian Research Council stands to become an even more important organisation in helping steer the research element of this country’s education revolution, and that is what this specific bill is about. But it is just one part of this government’s commitment to education, a commitment to make sure that Australia is at the cutting edge, is one of the best countries in the world in terms of the education that we provide to our children and to adults when they go on to higher education. We are doing that because that provides benefits to the whole country in economic productivity, the ideas that come out and the way in which these things can be generated and harnessed by our economy.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I commend this bill. It is a very important bill, as it is a vital part of the education revolution, and it is one that should be supported by all sides and commended to the House.

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to support the Australian Research Council Amendment Bill 2008. Breakthrough, world-class research is the backbone of the Australian knowledge economy. This bill will create 200 new ‘future fellowships’, providing $140,000 per year to Australian researchers from 2009 to 2012. The researchers will be what are called mid-career researchers. This is going to be a very important program to build on skills that already exist within Australian universities, to build on the human capital that Australia already has.

The Future Fellowships scheme will add to the $326.3 million appropriated for in the current budget. It will be administered under the Discovery element of the National Competitive Grants Program, which is run by the Australian Research Council. The reason why these future fellowships are being legislated for by an amendment to the Australian Research Council Act is that it is the Australian Research Council that provides advice to the government on research matters and makes recommendations to the minister on the allocation of funds within the National Competitive Grants Program. There are two elements within the National Competitive Grants Program: Discovery projects, which fund individual researchers; and Linkage projects, which support cooperative research between higher education providers and industry, government and community organisations. The future fellowships are located, as I have indicated, within the Discovery projects part of the program, which is administered by the Australian Research Council.

The Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Senator Carr, has been working throughout this year to develop the Future Fellowships scheme, which gives effect to a commitment made some 10 days before the last election by the then Leader of the Opposition and now Prime Minister, Mr Rudd. That commitment was, as it was put by the now Prime Minister on 14 November last year, to keep ‘our brightest and best in Australia’ by means of this Future Fellowships program. The fellowships are quite valuable at $140,000 a year, to be available to some 1,000 of Australia’s top researchers in the middle of their careers. That was announced by the Prime Minister shortly before the election. That is the commitment that is being given effect to in this legislation.

The fellowships provide funding to mid-career researchers in a critical stage in their research careers. It is funding which will foster the growth of Australian research output and build on what has to be recognised as the already outstanding calibre of Australian researchers. There is a long, long list over the last couple of centuries of Australians engaging in world-class scientific research. One can think of multiple Nobel laureates who have changed the world of science, such as Lawrence and William Bragg, Peter Doherty and Sir John Eccles. Perhaps a more recent example worth mentioning is Professor Ian Frazer of the University of Queensland, whose world-class work in the cancer area has discovered a vaccine that will assist in preventing a cancer that currently kills 250,000 women every year. If one is in any doubt about the value of research, that is a very concrete example which shows us all why research, and research at the highest possible level, is well worth supporting.

This bill gives effect, in part, to the government’s commitment at all levels to supporting education, to funding education and to ensuring that Australia is not left behind in the very clear competition Australia is engaged in across the world in the development of the human capital of our country. It has been recognised for many years that investing in human capital will produce a return that will repay the investment many times over—a high rate of return. It is not simply something that sounds like common sense to anyone who has looked long and hard at education; it is this notion of human capital. Indeed, human capital economics is a discrete field of study. There are human capital economists like James Hickman at the University of Chicago—who won a Nobel prize for economics in 2000—who have been conducting research in this area for decades to show not simply as a matter of first principles or common sense but by hard research that public spending on education and skills produces high rates of return on investment for countries that go down that path.

It is quite clear that there are many countries in the world that are well aware of the returns that are to be obtained by investing in education and skills. One has only got to look at the example in our region, Singapore, and, further afield, Israel to see that there are countries that almost entirely lack physical resources and are beset by various difficulties in the regions they are in, which, through measured and considered and consistent investment in skills and the human capital of their countries, have immeasurably added to the prosperity of the people of their countries. They are but two examples. Australia, which of course does not suffer from the disadvantage of being resource poor but has very many natural advantages and many other advantages as well, should build on those natural advantages and engage in investment in its human capital similar to that which Israel and Singapore have been engaging in for some time.

Nations which compete with Australia are well aware of the need to invest in human capital. Those countries have been acting on that awareness. In stark contrast, Australia has not been acting on that awareness. You only have to look at the statistical work that has been published in recent years by the OECD to see just how accurate that statement is. I am going to use some of the statistics provided by the OECD, but I could not go past a very pithy introduction to the OECD’s Education at a glance: OECD indicators 2005 publication, which deals with the point I have been attempting to make about investment in human capital. It reads:

Education and lifelong learning today play a critical role in the development of our economies and societies. This is true in the world’s most advanced economies as well as in those currently experiencing periods of rapid growth and development. Human capital has long been identified as a key factor in driving economic growth and improving economic outcomes for individuals, while evidence is growing of its influence on non-economic outcomes including health and social inclusion.

If you go to what the statistics published by the OECD show, you see a shameful decline in public spending on education, particularly public spending on tertiary education, in Australia on the Howard government’s watch. Between 1995 and 2004, public funding of tertiary education increased by an average of 49 per cent across the OECD countries but declined by four per cent in Australia. So, in that period, very distinctly on the Howard government’s watch, Australia was the only OECD country where the total level of public funding of tertiary education decreased.

One sometimes hears those on the other side speaking of an increase in private investment in tertiary education, which in Australia in the period that I am talking about—1995 to 2004—went up by some 98 per cent, but even that compares very poorly with the average OECD increase over that period of 176 per cent. Most of our competitor nations managed to increase their expenditure on tertiary education at both the public and the private level by very substantial amounts in this period. Regrettably, the policy adopted by the Howard government for its nearly 12 years in office seems to have been confined to an attempt to shift responsibility from the public sector to the private sector. So, rather than leveraging more private investment and having some kind of partnership with private investment in tertiary education, we saw a shift by the Howard government towards private investment, with a complete decline in public investment in education. What that has meant at a practical level is that there has been a shifting of the burden to individual students and their families, who are being required to pay more through higher tuition fees.

I appreciate that people tend to tune out when they listen to statistics, but sometimes they tell a very important story, so I would like to mention one more. Australia is falling behind its competitors in the number of graduates in key scientific areas. In the period that I am talking about—1995 to 2004—we are way behind the OECD average for the number of engineering, manufacturing and construction graduates. We are much lower than the OECD average for the number of science and agriculture graduates.

As well, one could look at the statistics for expenditure on research, which is the subject of this bill. Countries in our immediate region—Singapore, Korea, Taiwan, mainland China—have had a startlingly large increase in research output. Mainland China is now the second biggest investor in research and development in the world. But we are simply limping along here in Australia. We are, to put it directly, underinvesting in the human capital of this country not just in the long run; one suspects that in the medium term it is going to start to affect our global competitiveness, if it has not done so already.

The Future Fellowships scheme will grow Australia’s research capacity. That is its purpose. It is a very welcome addition to the higher education sector. As I have attempted to show, it is a sector that was starved of investment of public funds by the coalition government in its 11½ years in government. The document that I have been referring to, the OECD’s Education at a glance report from 2005, is properly described as a report card on the coalition government’s education programs. Perhaps I will mention a couple of other statistics from that report. It showed that Australia’s public spending on education as a whole was 4.3 per cent of GDP compared to an OECD average of five per cent. It showed—and the Deputy Prime Minister spoke of this yesterday in the House—that Australia ranked 19th out of 27 OECD countries in education expenditure.

The purpose of this bill is to establish these future fellowships, which are going to provide very important support to mid-career researchers who are recognised at that point as needing research support. We are all familiar with the tendency to promote bright young things, as it were, people who just come onto the scene, because they are the next best thing. I think we can accept that people who reach a certain level of eminence at the latter stages of their careers are also well supported. But this is the work done by Senator Carr over the course of this year to develop this Future Fellowships scheme and this program picks up something that is regarded as being something of a problem, that there is a lack of support for mid-career researchers, who often fall away and often cannot obtain the necessary funding for the research projects they wish to engage in. This program is going to fill that hole.

I am very certain, if I can be a little parochial for a moment, that the influence of this Future Fellowships program is going to be directly felt by the tertiary institutions in the south-east of Melbourne where my electorate is located, most notably Monash University, which I can say with confidence is one of the premier research universities in the world, not merely in Australia. We see at Monash University some world-class facilities that have been built in recent years, some of them with the assistance of the Victorian state Labor government, notably the synchrotron facility but also the more recently constructed electron microscope. The electron microscope at Monash is one of only three in the world, the other two being located in Cambridge in the United Kingdom and Berkeley in California. It enables study of the atomic structure of materials. There are researchers in every field who are queueing up to use the $35 million electron microscope which has recently been constructed at Monash University.

I do not have time in any sense to list all of the research activities that are taking place at Monash University. I mention, for example, the stem cell research that is being conducted at Monash or the recent program and facility that has been established for the study and production of monoclonal antibodies and a whole range of other research, particularly in the medical area, all of which is likely to be assisted by this Future Fellowships program, as indeed will be research that is being conducted at world-class facilities across our country.

This bill is part of the Rudd Labor government’s education revolution. There are many other aspects to the education revolution, ranging from early childhood education programs to schools, to vocational education and training and this type of funding at the higher end of the research sector. One part of that is the investment of $11 billion in the Education Investment Fund, which is intended to provide a long-term source of funding to renew the capital of our higher education system, both university and vocational education and training systems. We will not be able to have $11 billion in the Education Investment Fund if the present opposition continues, as the Deputy Prime Minister described it yesterday in the House, its smash and grab raid on the surplus. The very newly elected Leader of the Opposition almost in his first press conference announced that the budget surplus which is needed to fund the Education Investment Fund is not going to be safe. He gave a long list of matters that apparently the opposition are going to use the surplus for. We want to invest in education. This bill is an investment in education, and I commend the bill to the chamber.

Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of the Australian Research Council Amendment Bill 2008. It amends the Australian Research Council Act to increase the funding limits in the special appropriation and insert new funding caps for the last year of the forward budget estimates. That is what we are formally doing here, but in reality what we are also doing is implementing a promise, a commitment made to Australians by the current Prime Minister, then opposition leader, on 14 November last year. One of the hallmarks of the new government is not just that throughout 2007 the opposition had thought carefully about what was needed to build our nation to the future but that now we are in government we are going about the process of building that nation.

It is important for a range of reasons. It is important because it is how we want to act; we do what we said we would do as a government and we do it well. I will just quote from the original statement that we made almost a year ago, following all of that consideration put in by the then shadow minister, Senator Carr, in the course of 2005, 2006 and 2007. The statement from the then opposition leader read:

A Rudd Labor Government will invest in new future Fellowshipsto keep Australia’s best and brightest mid-career researchers in Australia.

Federal Labor’s Future Fellowships program will offer four year Fellowships valued at $140,000 a year to 1,000 of Australia’s top researchers in the middle of their career.

In addition, each researcher’s institution would receive a $50,000 grant to support the purchase of related infrastructure and equipment for their research project.

It goes on, but that is the simple commitment that we made. Without reading the detail of that statement—and I am happy to table it for those who are interested—I will read now from a statement made by the minister on budget night implementing this policy promise. The statement reads:

The Rudd Labor Government today delivered on its election commitment of funding of $326 million over four years to create a Future Fellowships scheme for top mid-career researchers.

The scheme will offer 1,000 talented Australian and international mid-career researchers four-year fellowships of up to $140,000 a year. Host organisations will receive up to an additional $50,000 a year to support related infrastructure and equipment for research projects.

The outstanding work conducted by our best and brightest is the foundation stone upon which Australia is building a first-class, internationally competitive national innovation system.

The remarkably identical nature of the promise and its delivery is the hallmark of a government that does what it said it would do.

The importance of the science agenda to our nation has always been obvious. It has been obvious in our education and in our economy. For my generation, science has played a particularly important role, not just in the obvious area of health care but in the less obvious areas of inspiration. Throughout the 1960s we all grew up against the backdrop of the space race, of the attempts to land on the moon, of the technology that grew from the international collaborative efforts of like-minded nations and competitive efforts of not-like-minded nations to understand, interpret and grow the collective wisdom of mankind from the study of outer space. It was inspirational.

Last week in Europe a massive experiment was commenced with the turning on of the Hadron Collider. My eldest boy is 12. The interest he took in the television coverage of that special scientific event is heartening, and the education that took place in our schools around that event is inspiring. But, most importantly, it brings home to our kids, to the next generation, that the pursuit of science is not only important in itself but also underpins the essential parts of our industry and supports our living standards for the future.

In this bill, we commit $942.9 million over four years. As I said, it is an election commitment fulfilled. It is an election commitment that fits into the four pillars of the current government’s education revolution. We have early intervention in education to support the needs of young kids, especially young kids at risk. We have the digital education revolution. All of us in this place have had the opportunity to be in high schools at the moment that the principals receive computers, and we have seen on the faces of the kids in the schools in our electorates the passion about and the embracing of this great investment in technology and in the future of education for our kids.

We have a massive program through our TAFEs in training the workforce to meet the skills challenges of the future. In my electorate of Brand, which encompasses the Kwinana industrial precinct, we can see a future where up to 40 per cent of our current workforce will retire in no more than four to five years. In six or seven years, the current workforce will have seen a 50 per cent reduction in its current numbers. Less than four per cent of our current workforce are aged under 24. Training forms an important part of our education revolution, but this particular bill relates to research and research in universities.

Prior to coming into parliament, I spent a year as an executive director of the Western Australian Institute for Medical Research. In that role, it became apparent to me what great gains could be made out of medical research. Importantly, I noted some of the very good things that were being done by Michael Wooldridge, the then Minister for Health. Minister Wooldridge put in place significant investment in medical research and created what he referred to as a ‘virtuous cycle’ to put major medical research into public hospitals to create a health benefit that was more significant than almost any other direct investment that could have been made in modern medicine in our public health system.

The equation went as simply as this: people involved in public health will, when exposed to the best possible science, lift their game. It means our doctors are exposed to better ideas. It means our nurses and our hospital administrators are more alert to scientific method. It creates a linkage between medical research and, most importantly, science based, evidence based medicine in our public hospitals. It is a legacy that Michael Wooldridge left to our nation through his occupancy of the health portfolio throughout those years in the late 1990s. It is a legacy that stands our public hospitals around the nation in good stead.

We have seen since that time the massive growth of the medical research community in Queensland. Throughout the middle to late 1990s, former Premier Kennett in Victoria built a significant foundation of medical research off the back of existing institutions such as the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne. It may sound surprising that there is such a history and tradition in the last 20 years or so of support for science research. It is unfortunate that, in the course of the last five to seven years, science grants and research funding from the former Howard government in its latter years became hopelessly politically tainted. It is a reality that many of the secure principles that underpinned the initiatives of the Kennett government and of Michael Wooldridge as health minister became polluted by political interference in science research through the last five to seven years.

This bill understands the importance of proper process, it understands the importance of peer review in creating excellent science, and it understands the importance of transparency in decision making around what good science is going to be funded. As we look forward over the next five or 10 years, Australia stands poised to make significant research investments in tropical science, an area where we can lead the world. In Western Australia there is a magnificent bid for a radio telescope that has the capacity not just to explore the far reaches of the universe but also to build an industry—a high-end science research based industry—around a magnificent piece of infrastructure that we all hope will actually be put in place. Importantly, there are massive investments that we can make in horticulture, in agricultural science and in social sciences.

But, as we look at the ways in which our nation will make those investments, we need also to be aware that nations in our region are actually investing more than we do at this moment and more, even, than this bill will commit. Not even our $11 billion Education Investment Fund, which currently is at risk as the opposition parties in the Senate go about whittling it away, will put us on the same stage as nations to our north. In the course of the last 15 years, the Chinese economic miracle has been driven by a number of factors: human ingenuity, a capacity to capture resources, a willingness to educate the population and an understanding that investment in science is what drives good education and good industrial policy.

I come from the state of Western Australia. Our agricultural dominance is that we create the nation’s export grain crop. We have done that on the basis of outstanding agricultural science, understanding what trace elements need to be added to our otherwise ancient and arid soils. That research has created a situation where this year our grain crop will probably top 10 million tonnes in a year that has seen indifferent, variable and scant rainfalls through our critical wheat belt. It is important to remember that the wheat belt in Western Australia has grown on the back of agricultural science and has grown to a dominant position from a period at the start of the last century where our farmers literally died of starvation because of a lack of understanding of what trace elements were needed to be added to our soils. If we fast-forward to the first decade of the current century, we see the Western Australian grain belt leading the nation in its productivity, its application of scientific method and its prospects for the future.

Science in Western Australia goes even further than agriculture. We have all seen in recent years the celebration over our own Western Australian scientific Nobel laureates. The discovery of the heliobacter at Royal Perth Hospital in the mid-1980s created a scientific understanding of how ulcers were formed and how to treat and get rid of the problem of ulcers. At the time, in the early 1980s, it was generally accepted that, if you were a sedentary person, if you were aged over 40, if you had stress in your life, that is why you got ulcers. Barry Marshall and his team discovered that in fact the heliobacter created the ulcerous condition, and treatment of the heliobacter could easily remove the ulcers, in the main in the stomach and throat regions of the body.

That research was done in a public hospital, with very little public funding. It was done against a prevailing view that said the research was nonsense. It was done in an environment where research was not peer reviewed, where grants were not transparently given and where, in effect, a mates system was in place. Australian science is better than that, and this bill aspires to and creates the preconditions to make our science better than that. This bill is therefore about good science.

The bill is also about saying what you mean and doing what you say. Throughout 2005 and 2006, then Shadow Minister Kim Carr made clear that he wanted a better research environment, a better funded research environment and therefore better outcomes. It is important that in this place we acknowledge the great work of ministers of the past—and I have done that by mentioning the work of Michael Wooldridge—but it is important also as we look to the future to understand that, in science, transparency and funding go hand in hand. It is also important that we know, recognise and understand that the threats to the $11 billion Education Investment Fund, also created in the federal budget, are serious threats. Not just are they threats about politics; they are threats to our capacity to meet the world as we need to meet it and to build an environment in our schools, in our universities and in our research centres that allows us to grow, to obtain benefits for our lifestyles and to obtain benefits for our economy from outstanding research. I commend this bill to the House.