George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science. Will the minister update the House on the challenges facing innovators and entrepreneurs across all sectors of Australia's economy?

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Dawson for his question. I know he has a very deep interest in innovation and creativity, especially in the agricultural sector—the primary industries sector—which has been one of Australia's great innovators and great creators of new technologies.

Bill Ferris, the new chair of Innovation Australia, is often referred to as the father of venture capital in Australia. He started his first venture capital business in 1970, even before Israel were starting venture capital businesses, so he truly has been the father of venture capital in this country. He is now the chairman of Innovation Australia, appointed by this government. Today he gave a speech in Adelaide where he released the Australian innovation systems report at a CEDA event. Bill identified six challenges that we are facing in Australia if we want to improve jobs and growth in the innovation sector: access to risk capital funding; access to business and entrepreneurship skills; access to international markets; lack of active collaboration for commercial outcomes; insufficient investment and interest in science, technology, engineering and maths curricula; and a risk-averse culture.

I also had the opportunity today to meet with Avi Hasson, the Chief Scientist of Israel. I will be seeing him later this year. The Prime Minister has also been speaking and meeting with Avi over the last couple of months. The Israelis are also informing the effort that we are going to be putting into turning these six areas around that are stopping innovation from helping to grow jobs and create growth in the economy. Everything we do in this government is about jobs and is about growth. The whole purpose of the innovation and science agenda in December will be about creating the kind of structure in the Australian economy that encourages innovation, technology, research and development, commercialising research, talents and skills, the government as an exemplar, raising capital—all for the purpose of creating more jobs and more growth than we have already created.

We are widely consulting. Recently we had a health stakeholders meeting to discuss how we can more this agenda forward. We had an education stakeholders meeting this morning in my office. The Prime Minister himself has hosted a couple of sit-down roundtables with people in this part of the economy as well as a national economic summit to discuss the things that we can do as a government to promote jobs and growth. I know that the assistant ministers for innovation and science have done exactly the same thing in their areas—in science and innovation. It is very important to bring the entire economy with us. We want to consult, get it right and announce it in a way that will be embraced by the business community.

Mr Burke interjecting—

Thank you for saying I am a visionary guy.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A revolutionary.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh, a revolutionary guy. I thought you said a visionary guy. I end on that note. (Time expired)