Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to speak on the Australian Research Council Amendment Bill 2021 because this parliament should take a great interest in anything to deal with the way in which we think through the things that are affecting us as a country, an economy and a community, particularly through the arms of research in this nation. Labor has already said we will support this bill because we do appreciate that the bill itself is designed to amend the Australian Research Council Act to apply indexation to approved research programs, and it will also insert a funding year for the 2024-25 financial year.

The Research Council is an independent body which funds primary and applied research through the Discovery Program and the Linkage Program. It has been impressed upon us by the bill itself and the documents supporting the bill that this will be important to support the ongoing operations of the Australian Research Council, which we obviously support, and it's why we support the bill.

Coming to the broader point of research, research is critical, particularly in the environment that we are in, where there is an active reconsideration of industry policy being undertaken by countries all over the world. There is a need for us to think through how we meet or make the things that nations need, the way in which we are reliant on others and the way in which trade may or may not be working to help us in meeting the needs of the country. There is also a need for us to address things like self-sufficiency wherever we possibly can. That will not be something that can be achieved perfectly, nor should it be pursued overwhelmingly. We need to work out the things that we are strong at and good at, and be able to mobilise resources to ensure we scale that up.

The pandemic showed that when we needed certain things—most notably in the arena of medical equipment—we found at key points in time that we couldn't get our hands on masks and ventilators and, down the track, vaccines. It has also re-emerged that we yet again need more access to masks and rapid antigen tests. This also showed us that when supply chains were under pressure we needed to reconsider how we manufactured the goods and services Australians needed to get access to in times of need.

The other thing that has forced a reconsideration of industry policy is geopolitical factors, where, as I referenced a few moments ago, we have had to rethink where we get our goods from, the way in which trade is operating and the way in which disruptions to that trade may be affecting our ability to get those things. You are now seeing industry policy become a bigger feature of public policy in a way that it hasn't for many years. In fact the view had been, through a process of economic liberalisation through the eighties and nineties, that industry policy itself had been too driven by governments, had not been sensitive to markets and had potentially distorted the way in which resources were allocated, and that we weren't getting the best outcomes. For many years in this nation—and it started under a Labor government—we moved away from this whole notion of what was described as 'picking winners'. That singular phrase has stayed in political discourse in this country and in economic thinking for decades.

Yet what was happening offshore was that nations weren't necessarily so dogmatic. In fact a number of countries were actively thinking about what sectors they could back—some of which had come out of command and control economies, most notably countries that had exited the Soviet Union's sphere of influence. Most notably I think of Estonia, which has completely reinvigorated its economy with a big focus on digital and tech and which is one of the outliers, one of the outstanding nations, in digitisation and what it has been able to do to reform its own operations. Countries have thought about their strengths. Countries have thought about what they can do to mobilise resources to get things done.

From our perspective, Labor have said, through the National Reconstruction Fund, there would be a number of sectors we would think deeply about to ensure we see better industry outcomes. The pressure is on nations to think about industry policy in a new way, to think about how they can support sectors that are really important to their economy and, through the way, potentially, to ensure that the economic complexity of nations evolves as well. As has been observed, when you look at Australia's economic complexity, we have a lot of work to do to ensure that we are not completely and utterly reliant on a few sectors alone.

Under the National Reconstruction Fund that Labor have championed, we will look at improving value-adding in agriculture. We will look at improving value-adding in resources and mining. We will look at what we can do in the arena of energy and renewable technology development. We will also look at the arena of medical and medical manufacture, and at what we can do to support early-stage innovation and enabling technologies that other countries—again, I come back to the point about picking winners. A lot of countries have dedicated themselves to having very rigorous programs in place to pursue the development of national plans around artificial intelligence, robotics and quantum computing. All these things will be really important longer term. If, as a country, we want to be left behind, we only need to underinvest in some of those areas. Other nations get it. This is not just an issue of economic security but of national security as well.

In particular, there is this hunger that exists in the Australian community to see us deal with this fact that I think shocks a lot of people—that we are ranked amongst the lowest in the OECD on manufacturing self-sufficiency. We import way too many things across critical areas where we used to have a history of local production which has now gone. We need to rebuild that, and we need to find ways to ensure that we've got the things we need. Bob Hawke thought this through many years ago. That was why he championed, for example, back in 1989, the establishment of the cooperative research centres. It's why he thought about ensuring that we didn't have a brain drain and it's why he thought about the way in which he and his government could broaden the way in which the economy was working to ensure that we weren't reliant in just a few spaces, and we had these CRCs supporting economic and social activity along the way.

But, if we want to deal with manufacturing, if we want to boost manufacturing—which is what a lot of people want to see—and if we're going to be a country that makes things, it is critical that we be a country that thinks about how those things are made. Ideas are crucial. We see those ideas emerge largely through the investment in R&D that we make as a nation. As I mentioned earlier, the reality is that as a nation we don't do enough to address that issue of manufacturing self-sufficiency. And, if you want to make things, as I said, the other area you need to think about is how they're made. On the R&D side, we keep sliding down the international rankings. Since 2011 and 2012, we have seen investment in R&D contracting—falling from 2.11 per cent of GDP to 1.79 per cent of GDP in 2019-20. This is not good if we think longer term about economic health.

If you look at expenditure on R&D incentives in the period from 1985 to 2017-18, for example, you see that there is a build-up of national activity under a Labor government and then a drop-off under a coalition government, only to be resuscitated under Labor and then fall again. Those stats don't lie. They are there. If we are not backing our brains, we will see ourselves short-changed in the longer term. As has been identified by countless reports in R&D in this country, including reports commissioned by the government itself, we will only ever be a follower. We will be an importer. We will be basically leveraging off someone else's brains and someone else's ideas, and we will be a nation reliant on the imports of very sophisticated technology or product. We've got to be able to do better. We have to have the faith to back our local brains. We cannot continue to have a situation where we see cuts in that investment.

When it comes to research through arms like the Australian Research Council or others, the only consistency we do see is regular cuts from the coalition. From the moment they got into power, we saw continual attempted cuts. We saw a cut of $550 million introduced in the 2014-15 budget. Then there was an attempt in the 2018-19 budget to make a further $2 billion cut. This spooked even people within the coalition, and there was reporting by the Senate which talked about the damage this would do to the longer-term economic prospects of the nation. It had to be overturned. But what is staggering is that the coalition, without any sense of shame, then turned around and suggested that they were now adding $2 billion to research and development in this country, and they've been going around trumpeting how much they're investing in R&D when the reality is that that was the prevention of a cut that they thought they would make.

What we do see so often in this country under the coalition is that there is no sense of a broader framework with respect to what research is being undertaken in the nation, what's required to support it and how government can put those things in place that ensure that that happens. So we see piecemeal efforts. We see the announcement of a patent box or a fintech sandbox here and there, or we see different initiatives rolled out during a Press Club speech and a bit of money put here and there, or we see this type of initiative put forward. We see the coalition playing around with research as people reacted to the acting minister for education just before December deciding he would make a call on what research he valued and didn't value. We don't see any significant plan by the coalition to say: 'Look, we are falling behind relative to other nations. This is bad for our longer term economic prospects, and here's what we'll do to fix it.' There is none of that. This bill does not provide that. Nothing else that the coalition has done will provide that.

There are two consistent things, I have to say, about the coalition. One is they will always attempt to cut, particularly in these areas, and will always make a budget cut on issues that are critical to the nation. The other is, when they're under pressure, they'll make an announcement to make it look like they're doing the opposite or that they're better than what they are. But the announcements themselves don't stack up. There's no substance to them. We find out soon enough that the detail overwhelms the spin and the shine and the gloss of the announcement and we are back to square one. We cannot afford that.

A lot of us on this side of the House recognise, we believe, that this country, be it First Nations people or the people who came hereafter, given the isolation of this continent, given the way supply lines have worked historically, have had to be a people that are smart enough to work out problems confronting us. In a dry and arid continent like this, we've had to make our own luck and we've had to have the smarts to do it. We need an investment in brains, through the Research Council or the tertiary sector or our vocational sector, making sure we've got that. The coalition have always cut and failed to support local ideas and failed to back thinking. I constantly hear from firms, who are under pressure in the absence of government support and excitement for what they do, thinking they'll have to go overseas. It is unbelievable that we still have that in this day and age. This has been a constant thread through Australian history, where people have had to leave these shores to get backing for their ideas because we didn't back know-how, and that's not right. It's not right and it signals spectacularly a lack of faith in our own people to sort out these problems that face us all—economic or social. We should not have that. We should be making sure that institutions like the Australian Research Council and everything else benefit from a solid framework backed up by a significant investment that ensures that Australia is not just a place that makes things but also a place that knows how to make them as well.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to follow the member for Chifley on this debate on the Australian Research Council Amendment Bill 2021, and I commend him for his contribution to the debate. Whilst the legislation provides indexation of research funding, the reality is that coalition governments—previous coalition governments and in particular this one—have no credibility and no commitment to research and development in this country, as the member for Chifley so eloquently highlighted. Even more shamefully, the Morrison government has a track record of politicising the government's research grants process—first in 2018 when Minister Birmingham blocked 11 research grants, then in 2020 when Minister Tehan interfered, and now, after just two weeks as the acting minister, Minister Robert has vetoed six grants that were about to commence which had been scrutinised and approved by the Australian Research Council, an independent body that approves the grants on the basis of their merits and their suitability.

What makes Minister Roberts's interference even more disgraceful is that he announced his decision on Christmas Eve when he clearly hoped that his actions would go unnoticed and unreported. He was hoping it would be all swept under the carpet and nobody would notice his mean-spirited action. It was an insensitive and callous decision that would undoubtedly have shattered the Christmas of those researchers who lost out from their grants being cut. So much for the minister's Christmas goodwill and Christmas spirit! Furthermore, the minister 's interference was disrespectful to the independent assessing committee and destroyed all public confidence in the grants process. Is it any surprise, then, that the Australian Research Council chief executive, Professor Sue Thomas, announced that she will step down from her role early? I also understand that there has been a petition, with nearly 1,500 signatories, calling on Minister Robert to reinstate the grants.

Even more notable is a letter to the minister and Professor Thomas, signed by over 60 current and past ARC laureate fellows, which is very critical of the minister 's intervention. I will quote, in part, from that letter:

As current and past ARC Laureate Fellows, we are very concerned in the way that applications for 2022 ARC Discovery Projects were managed. Our concerns are threefold.

First, the funding decisions were announced a month later than usual, only a week before funding could commence on January 1st. Most if not all university research offices were by then closed till the new year. It is highly unlikely that any of these grants can indeed commence on January 1st, and staff be hired.

No good reason has been given as to this delayed notification. The retention and recruitment of research staff is greatly harmed by such delays. This late decision is likely to have the greatest impact on early career researchers, especially with regards to diversity and inclusion.

Second, the funding decisions were announced on Christmas Eve, giving an appearance that the date was chosen to avoid close scrutiny. This was a heartless date to give the many unsuccessful applicants news about their applications.

Third, and most critically, six grants—all in the humanities—were subject to rigorous and independent peer review and were recommended for funding but vetoed by the Minister … These projects cover topics like climate activism and China which are vital for the future well being of Australia.

I believe that that letter sums up the situation very well and just highlights, in my view, the improper interference by the minister and the government.

Researchers in Australia continuously face uncertainty and insecurity, living from one grant to another—grants which, in most cases, have to also be subsidised by the universities themselves. These are some of Australia's smartest minds, whose research leads to life-changing industrial and medical science and technology that not only returns over $3 in economic benefits for every dollar invested but ensures that Australia remains internationally competitive and capable of innovation. Indeed, we should be proud of the innovation brought about by scientists and other researchers in this country over the past decades. We have led the way on so many occasions

Sadly, we now have reports that over three-quarters of all young researchers have considered a career change in the past five years. I personally know of researchers who have left Australia to secure work overseas, and they got that work overseas, yet they couldn't get it here in Australia. Right now, they are working in other countries doing the very research that would have benefited us, as opposed to the countries they are working in.

Adding to the insecurity for researchers, Australian investment in research and development is at an all-time low, having fallen from 2.25 per cent of GDP in 2008 to around 1.79 per cent in 2018. The OECD average for research and development investment is 2.38 per cent. We are not only falling behind other countries but also slowly reducing the amount of money that goes into research and development in this country. How can we possibly remain competitive with the rest of the world if we are not prepared to invest in the research that is necessary to drive us forward?

This all comes at a time when universities already struggle to retain academics and researchers because of the loss of income that they faced from the COVID-19 pandemic and the Morrison government's failure to financially support the university sector. Because universities themselves have to put money on the table with respect to many of these research projects, it makes it even more difficult for them when the government cuts its own funding.

In my view this is short-sightedness on the part of this government and, quite frankly, it beggars belief from a government whose ministers I've heard come into this place time and time again and talk about the importance of research in this country, which I agree with. Yet their talk is not matched by the dollars that they put into the sector when the budget comes around each year.

As the member for Chifley quite rightly pointed out, over recent years there have been hundreds of millions of dollars cut from research and development in this country, and when the government tried to put a few dollars back in a year or so ago, it was simply a matter of just trying to pick up some of the cuts that they had already made. Sadly, they didn't continue with topping up the research and investment dollars that they announced a couple of years ago.

The minister's letter of expectation sent in 2021 to the Australian Research Council proposes several changes in respect of governance and the programs themselves. Both the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia have raised concerns about those changes. They have written to the government outlining their concerns. Their concerns are legitimate, and I urge the government not to ignore them for they are the organisations that know best where the research dollars should be used.

I will just conclude with an observation—and the member for Chifley quite rightly alluded to this in his remarks and, again, it's part and parcel of the governance and programs that the government is saying it wants to support with research grants—and it is: direct a lot more of the funds into the manufacturing sector. When this government decimated the automotive manufacturing industry sector in this country, it was contributing about the same amount of dollars to this country that this whole package commits to. With the indexation, which is what the legislation is all about, this package commits to around $800 million of research and development funding. That is about the same amount of money that was being poured into this country by the car makers at the time they closed their operations here.

So here we are, on the one hand, talking about the importance of a sector, and the importance of investing in a sector, while, on the other hand, we had the sector already operating here and investing the same amount of dollars that we are proposing through this parliament today and that will be coming out of taxpayer funds. Those investments, albeit they were being made by the car makers, had benefits for the rest of society, and their research and innovation was then transferred and used by other sectors. Today we don't even make cars in this country anymore. That's the kind of loss and foolishness I see from this government and why this government has never truly been committed to research and development. It talks the talk but it doesn't walk the walk.

Having said that, I hope that the government will at least listen to the concerns raised by the sector with respect to these allocations.

Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This bill, the Australian Research Council Amendment Bill 2021, amends the ARC Act to enable continued financial assistance to be provided for approved research programs administered by the ARC through to 2024-2025. Specifically, this bill alters existing funding allocations for the next three years using an indexation rate, resulting in an additional appropriation of $844 million to 2024-25. I welcome this.

The bill does not affect the substance of the act or operations of the ARC at all, and more's the pity, because some of the finest minds in the Australian research community tell us that reform is indeed needed. Let's see why they'd say that. Late last year, after months of delays, successful ARC Discovery projects were announced on Christmas Eve, with 587 project approved for funding out of 3,096 applications. While the nation was sleeping, 587 projects were slipped under the tree. This long, drawn-out process was led by the ARC College of Experts, highly skilled, extraordinarily competent, credentialled people, eminent in their fields. They worked through more than 3,000 applications, shortlisted them and then recommended them for funding. The list then went to the minister for education. So it was the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. But there was some stirring, and six projects never made it down the chimney to the Christmas tree. They went up in ministerial smoke. The acting education minister, Mr Robert, exercised his right to overrule the rigorous ARC review. Minister Robert decided that six of the expert panel recommended grants for research relating to climate activism and China were not, in his view, in the national interest. He put his ministerial red ink through them.

I have been a researcher who has been through the ARC process. I've spent countless hours on writing grant applications, extensive literature reviews, careful collation of research teams' publication records and CVs, endless meetings, project planning rationale, compilation of budgets, proposed student scholarships, and collaborations with other departments and universities. Then comes the first assessment and ranking, then writing, and writing again, rejoinders. Then comes more waiting. Announcement dates are delayed, lives are put on hold and postdoctoral students, in December, are left wondering if they'll have a job in the following months. It means suspended planning and lives on hold. All of this is in an environment where university researchers experience less and less career certainty. We have heard speakers in this chamber this afternoon detailing the brain drain to other nations. All of this is in an environment where universities were excluded from JobKeeper. Finally, then imagine having made the cut, being a winner in the field where less than 20 per cent have success, and being one of the team in those six projects rejected by the minister on the basis that they did not, in his view, demonstrate value for taxpayers' money or contribute to the national interest.

Professor Lynette Russell, an historian at Monash University and current ARC laureate fellow, described the minister's veto as 'a significant constraint against academic freedom'. Let's be clear about who such laureates are. Laureate fellowships are awarded by the ARC to the most respected professors in their fields, with only 17 granted yearly. Professor Russell said:

Whether it be the test of 'national interest' or an excessive focus on a sector like manufacturing, research funding in Australia is becoming political and short-sighted.

Professor Russell went on to say:

Our title is rather telling: we are a college of experts, and I think it's fair to say the minister is not.

She went on:

The best return comes from letting researchers focus on curiosity-driven research. This has given us mRNA vaccines, the laser, and many other inventions that have lifted the quality of our lives.

Professor Brian Schmidt, the Nobel-Prize-winning astrophysicist and Australian National University vice-chancellor, in his state of the university address said there had been only 'four known occurrences of political interference' in the ARC's grant process, three of which in the last three years. He went on to say:

My strong view, a view held by many university leaders, whether they say it out loud or not, is Australia needs an apolitical system to allocate research funding and a review of the Australian Research Council.

Professor Schmidt said political interference can 'corrupt knowledge and slow down its creation'. He argued that academic independence is 'one of democracy's key advantages over other forms of government'. He said:

[It] allows us to pursue ideas across a broad spectrum of possibilities. We don't just focus on what is known or thought relevant or acceptable at the time.

The professor asked:

What would our society be like when the study of history, politics and literature has to reflect the views of the minister of the day?

Where would we be if we hadn’t been working on climate mitigation strategies for the past 30 years while the merchants of doubt sowed their seeds?

What if we hadn't invested in understanding the foundational properties of messenger RNA when it seemed just a dalliance with no practical benefits?

A petition with nearly 1,500 signatories—including those of high-profile authors JM Coetzee, Michelle de Kretser, Alexis Wright and Amanda Lohrey—has called for Minister Robert to reinstate the defunded projects and commit to legislating the complete independence of the ARC from government interference and censorship. They said:

That two-thirds of the six censored grants should be in literary studies demonstrates a dismissive attitude to the value of the imagination and creativity.

They went on:

The actions of the government reveal that it is committed to defunding Australia's literary culture by overriding academic autonomy and determining what kinds of knowledge can and cannot be pursued. This is especially ironic given its recent campaign to defend freedom of speech on Australia's campuses.

I want to be clear here: both major parties agree it is appropriate for the minister to wield this power. But I, alongside all of these esteemed academics, would say it is time for this to be reviewed. A Senate inquiry will now examine the power of ministers to veto research funding, after the Greens successfully referred to the Senate education committee their bill seeking to remove the power. Submissions to that inquiry close on 25 February, and I urge anyone out there who, like me, is concerned about ministerial interference to make a submission to that parliamentary inquiry. Thank you.

Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to be clear that Labor does support the passage of the Australian Research Council Amendment Bill 2021, but I especially want to acknowledge my support for the amendment moved by the member for Moreton:

… the House notes that the Government's mismanagement and politicisation of Australian Research Council grants and failure to adequately support Australia's universities during the pandemic are causing serious harm to our world-class researchers …

The Australian Research Council is Australia's independent research agency. Its purpose is to grow knowledge and innovation for the benefit of the community by funding the highest-quality research. The ARC runs a competitive grants process over a number of grant schemes. The process is arduous. The previous speaker, the member for Indi, spoke of this earlier and of her personal experience of that process. It goes through the highest standard of peer review. Applications take many months to put together and they take many more months to review.

I worked in the university sector for nearly 10 years. My first job in that sector was at the University of Western Australia, where I was a research contracts lawyer. One of the first tasks I had in that role was to develop contracts for successful applicants for Linkage Projects. Linkage Projects, through the ARC, involve academics working with industry and the university, with in-kind contributions, to develop a particular line of research. I also worked on developing agreements around centres of excellence. And though I did not do the agreements for Discovery Projects grants, I had a lot to do with the many academics that pursue Discovery grants, which is, in this country, the principal mechanism to fund basic research in the humanities and the sciences.

Discovery grants are extremely competitive. There is only a 19 per cent success rate. In fact, Discovery grants are harder to get than any kind of grant a Liberal government might give to someone in a safe Labor seat. Linkage grants involve, as I said, close collaboration and partnership with industry. In round 2 in 2020, the success rate was nearly 26 per cent. These grants are hard to come by. It takes a lot of effort to even get your application in, to get it through the rejoinder process, and there are many, many minds that work on these—the applicants themselves, but also the teams of research grants officers who help academics and their entire teams work through this process.

The peer review process is also arduous. Each proposal is about 50 to 100 pages, and each one is assessed by two members of the ARC College of Experts. They take their job seriously and read every single word. There's no colour-coded spreadsheet for the ARC College of Experts. Members of this college literally receive suitcases of applications under the ARC Discovery grants process. That's how competitive it is. It takes months to get through, reading every single night, these very extensive and expansive applications. Those applications then get reviewed again by four subject experts. This is a trusted, thorough, arduous and thoughtful process that has developed over many years. But this government shuns a well established trusted process in favour of its own personal political assessments.

The acting education minister rejected six humanities grants on unsupported grounds of not contributing to the national interest and not demonstrating value for money—this from Minister Robert, the member for Fadden, who charged the Australian taxpayer $1,000 a month for mobile broadband services. Where is the value for money in a $38,000 internet bill? And when did the minister make this announcement? It was on Christmas Eve last year. This is the longest delay in announcing ARC grant recipients in 30 years. You've got to ask: What are these people doing? What is the government doing? They have a college of experts and a thorough independent review process. They get their recommendations and do nothing with them, or they fiddle about with them. Who really knows? Ultimately, they make a political decision to grab a little soundbite in the middle of the night so that they can make an attack on academics, who are already under severe pressure, given that this government failed to support them through the pandemic, and, as we know, thousands of research jobs have been lost around this country, and 40,000 jobs have been lost within the higher education sector.

This is the longest delay in the notification of grants in 30 years. But perhaps the ARC Discovery grant applicants are even a little bit lucky that the member for Aston has been stood aside as education minister. That particular cultural warrior may have gone even further than Minister Robert. The truth is that there's a long history of interference in the ARC independent processes by the Liberal Party of Australia. Brendan Nelson, as the minister, vetoed three in seven applications. Senator Simon Birmingham, as the relevant minister, vetoed 11 ARC humanities grants. They play stupid, harmful games by picking titles that will get them a headline and maybe a bit of a clap and a cheerio from some of the shock jocks around this country. In doing so, they disrespect the literally thousands of hours of work conducted by researchers in universities right across this nation and that of their peers, the senior academics, the leaders of our research institutions that review these applications night after night. They think it's a little bit of a joke to pull out some seven-word title and dismiss the hundreds of pages of tens of thousands of words and the years and years of research that sit behind it. It's disgusting and it has to stop. It's wasteful, it's stupid, it's unfair, and it holds back Australian science.

I want to say a few words to conclude on the matter of science and commercialisation. I studied at university and worked there for 10 years amongst academics and academic scientists. From being around that system and from general reading, I’ve learned that you can’t boss around science. Discovery happens as it happens, but it always happens on the back of years and years of hard work.

The commercialisation of scientific discovery is important, but it is not everything, and it never will be. Not all science or scientific discovery can be commercialised. Take the discovery that the Helicobacter pylori bacterium plays a major role in causing most peptic ulcers. The work of the South Australian great, Robin Warren AC, and the Western Australian great, Barry Marshall AC, worked against commercial interest that produced medications and expensive surgeries to treat ulcers. Ulcers were thought to be a product of stress, and many people around the world spent thousands of dollars on psychiatric assessments and psychological appointments to try and beat ulcers. There was a groundswell of commercial interest that tried to defy the findings of Barry Marshall and Robin Warren. What Barry Marshall and Robin Warren proved was that ulcers could be cured by antibiotics. This simple—it's not a simple discovery; it was years of testing and, famously, even self-testing. They changed the lives of millions of people around the world.

These two Australian scientists were working in Fremantle Hospital, Royal Perth Hospital and the University of Western Australia many years ago, beavering away, trying to get funding just like everyone else tries to do in a very competitive research system. A complex discovery, complex to discover, changed the lives of millions once they had proved it—of course, Barry proved it on himself. They quite rightly were rewarded with the 2005 Nobel Prize for medicine. This is a scientific discovery that won't make money. It saves people money. It saves individuals money. People that get peptic ulcers and other stomach complaints now know that they can have a simple test for Helicobacter pylori bacterium, they can take a round of antibiotics and they will more than likely feel much better; they don't have to go through gastric surgery or other kinds of treatments that often make people's lives much worse.

To conclude, I would ask that education ministers in this government have a real think about how they treat scientists in this country—how they disregard their thoughtful and long-term work and their extraordinary effort when they put in these applications—and not dismiss the extraordinary work that goes into each and every Australian Research Council grant application. I thank the House.

Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister to the Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank all members and senators who have spoken in relation to the Australian Research Council Amendment Bill 2021. The bill amends the Australian Research Council Act 2001 to ensure continuity of the funding scheme of the Australian Research Council, the ARC. This bill is a routine matter that updates the existing funding caps and inserts new funding caps through until 30 June 2025 to provide for anticipated inflationary growth and the cost of Australian research supported by the ARC. The new cap for the 2021-22 financial year has been increased to just over $815 million, and a new paragraph has been added to provide appropriations, as per agreed Commonwealth policy, to the 2024-25 financial year.

The government values the important role played by university research in the creation of new knowledge, new social and economic citizens and as a platform for our engagement with intellectual and practical challenges facing the world. Of course, as you will know, Deputy Speaker, in my portfolio area, innovation and technology is a driving force for good as we reduce our emissions as part of a global solution toward sustainability.

The ARC is an important funder of industry linked research at our universities—research with real-world impacts to accelerate Australia's innovation agenda. Schemes under the ARC's Linkage Program require industry partners to provide matching funding to leverage funding provided by the Australian government. These schemes encourage and extend cooperative approaches to research and improve the use of research outcomes by strengthening links within Australia's innovation system and with innovation systems internationally.

ARC funding has supported many tangible long-term industry collaborations. For instance, a team led by Professor Michael Breadmore at the University of Tasmania has worked for over 20 years on great innovation to develop the world's first mobile device that can rapidly detect the chemical signature of inorganic homemade explosives—an interesting and important part of research that twins with national security. A spin-off company, GreyScan Australia Pty Ltd has now been formed and is selling the device for use by first responders and checkpoint operatives in a variety of detection scenarios, including military, public security, cargo and mail screening, passenger screening, commercial premises and, of course, at major events.

The ARC's Industrial Transformation Research Program funds research hubs and training centres to support higher-degree research students and postdoctoral researchers in gaining real-world practical skills and experience through placement in industry. One of the challenges that's always existed is making sure that academics get practical and real-world experience, not just because of the benefits to them but also because of the knowledge transfer that occurs into industry.

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, which I draw attention to in the context of primary research—many members might forget that it has an industrial capacity to take ideas and to develop them all the way through to commercialisation and scalability. These hubs and centres fund research in the priority areas: in advanced manufacturing; cybersecurity; defence; food and beverage; agribusiness; medical technologies and pharmaceuticals; mining equipment; resource technology and services; critical minerals processing, which is one of the most important sectors not just for Australia's research and industrial capacity but also for national security interests; oil, gas and energy resources; recycling and clean energy; and space.

These priority areas reflect the Australian government's commitment to developing critical industry sectors and to support collaboration between universities and industry. An example of these centres working in the advanced manufacturing and clean energy space is the ARC Training Centre for Future Energy Storage Technologies led by Professor Maria Forsyth at Deakin University. The researchers and their industry collaborators at this training centre are determined that the next breakthrough in battery technology will have a manufacturing home here in Australia, and thank the Maker for that. The centre is also training industry-led graduates who will become the next generation of renewable energy industry leaders in Australia—something we should all be excited about. There are already around 100 of these training centres and research hubs established in Australian universities, with funding of up to $5 million each provided by the ARC and with significant additional funding and support from industry partners.

These centres are breaking down the barriers between the ivory towers and real-world applications and charging Australian industry with the world-leading engineering and innovation talent of our universities. The Australian government's support for the ARC is enabling this transformation to occur in our innovation system. Successive Australian governments have made a sustained and significant investment in high-quality research within our university sector, which has contributed to its success and recognition internationally.

I thank members for their contributions and for supporting the government's continued commitment to the higher education and research sector. I do so because, on behalf of the whole House, this conversation is critically important when we look at the big challenges that not just our country faces but the global community. With the challenges and risk that are presented to the world on so many fronts, the solution is going to be the role of our scientists and innovators in technology, which is going to help and advance humanity. Particularly when you look in areas like the challenges affecting us resulting from climate change, it's going to be so important that we harness the power of technology and integrate it to the heart of our economy so that we can not just continue to innovate and prosper and grow but be part of the global solution not just to help ourselves but to help the world cut its greenhouse gas emissions footprint in the process.

It's going to be our research scientists and innovators who are going to take these ideas from their gestation through to their development, commercialisation and scalability, whether it's the potential of different forms of hydrogen and its role in industrial capacity and export as we move away from traditional fossil fuels to new and dynamic types of fuels or where it's ammonia. It's going to be the vehicles that we utilise in the same space through to what's necessary for freight, with potential for air and road transport too.

In every space of the economy and society we are going to face new challenges. The question for us is going to be how we respond to it. Universities can work in partnership with our research institutes as well as local communities. When I speak to various business leads and local mayors around the country about how they see their economic opportunity up to 2050, all of them talk about partnerships as part of the solution, and research is part of that conversation as well.

It's on that basis that the government remains utterly committed to the focus on higher education and research sectors as part of the building of Australia's future economy—something that it has done in past, we are rightly proud of and we wish to see continue into the future. It's on that basis I commend the bill to the House.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Moreton has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The immediate question is that the amendment be disagreed to.

Andrew Wallace (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the amendment be disagreed to.