Angie Bell (Moncrieff, Liberal National Party, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's with pleasure that I speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Australia’s Economic Accelerator) Bill 2022 today on behalf of the shadow minister for education. The coalition government, indeed, supports this bill which reintroduces measures introduced by us which lapsed at the election and which are now being reintroduced by this government. Imitation really is the best form of flattery.

My colleague the Hon. Alan Tudge is the previous minister for education. I acknowledge his work on this bill. He led a significant piece of work to review the government's investment in research to drive greater benefits for our economy. This work looked at the incredible research undertaken here in Australia by some of our brightest academic minds and the potential for commercialisation of their ideas. What we discovered was that, whilst we undertake world-leading research and publish more than 100,000 academic papers, we don't really do a lot with that research beyond the initial exploration. We saw incredible potential to take these ideas and make the investment more impactful. We saw that we could do this by translating it into commercial applications to meet some of our greatest challenges while also making a substantial economic reform. This would not only highlight Australia's incredible research but also provide a boost to our productivity, creating jobs and the industries of our future. This translation element was a key component of the coalition's $2.2 billion University Research Commercialisation Package and is the subject of the bill before us today.

Our University Research Commercialisation Package outlined key initiatives to reform Australia's research commercialisation landscape across four key areas. I'll outline them: by placing national priorities at the core of Australian government funded research; by using priority driven schemes to ramp up commercialisation activity; by delivering university research funding reform to strengthen incentives for genuine collaboration with industry; and by investing in people who are skilled in university industry collaboration. We outlined the mechanisms to drive these reforms through five key strategic and targeted investments including our $243 million Trailblazer Universities Program to boost prioritised research and development, and drive commercialisation outcomes with industry partners; a $150 million capital injection to expand the CSIRO Main Sequence ventures program which backs start-up companies and helps create commercial opportunities from Australian research; a $296 million for 1,800 industry PhDs and over 800 in new fellowships; the creation of a new IP framework for universities to support greater university industry collaboration and the uptake of research outputs; and, of course, the $1.6 billion over 10 years for Australia's Economic Accelerator, a new stage-gated competitive funding program to help university projects bridge the so-called valley of death, as it's known, on the road to commercialisation—the subject of this actual bill.

In relation to the first element of the package, the trailblazer program, the research component was aligned with delivering research that would support our national manufacturing priorities. These important priority areas were those we had identified as areas where Australia has significant comparative advantage and a strategic national interest. The areas at the time were medical products, food and beverage, recycling and clean energy, resources technology and critical minerals processing, defence industry, and space. Space is one of my favourites—I'll just mention Ryan Aerospace and Gilmour Space Technologies on the Gold Coast who have done so much work in this area.

The government ran an expression of interest to determine what potential projects were out there, where there could be partnerships with industry and where these ideas could be supported through to application. This process garnered significant interest from the sector and the types of projects being proposed and undertaken were exceptionally impressive. The proposals were reviewed by a panel that comprised leaders in the research field, industry and business leaders, and departmental executives. We announced the successful trailblazer universities in early 2022, which included Curtin University for their resources technology for critical minerals—a trailblazer to establish our competitive advantage in the critical minerals sector and to look at ways to shield Australia from supply chain disruptions, which was so important during COVID, as was highlighted to our country—and the University of Southern Queensland for a space project dubbed iLAuNCH that will look at automation, novel materials, communications and hypersonics. This project will fill gaps in our space market, including the production of rocket and launch facilities, satellite manufacturing, communication technologies and integrated sensing systems. The University of Queensland was included for a food and beverage project that would support doubling of the value of Australia's food and beverage sector by 2030. The University of New South Wales was included to lead a recycling and clean energy initiative to innovate our technologies from the lab to industry, communities and homes. Deakin University is developing a Recycling and Clean Energy Commercialisation Hub, also known as REACH, that will spearhead our recycling and clean energy advanced-manufacturing ecosystem in Australia. Finally, the University of Adelaide's defence trailblazer, aptly named 'Concept to sovereign capability', is focusing on developing new technologies and defence products. I don't know about anyone else in this chamber, but I think that list of projects is impressive.

These six projects alone, supported by close to $250 million in coalition funding, will create hundreds of partnerships across the higher education sector and, most importantly, with industry. Additionally, they will inject billions of dollars into the economy and create thousands of jobs right across the nation. That is what the funding was intended to do. I'm excited to watch these programs mature and realise all of the ambitions they aim for so as to catapult Australia on to the world stage. It is a very exciting time across the country.

The key element of our University Research Commercialisation Package, as I mentioned earlier, was our $1.6 billion investment in Australia's Economic Accelerator, the subject of the bill before the House today. This bill amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to make the appropriate provisions in schedule 1 to deliver this program and provide increased support to our universities to commercialise their world-leading research. This component of our package provides a 10-year investment for a competitive grant funding program. Again, our investment was to be aligned to areas that we identified as national priorities outlined in our Modern Manufacturing Strategy. A strategy that focused on expanding and modernising Australia's sovereign manufacturing capability, securing supply chains and investing in the skills and world-class research needed by our manufacturing businesses. Of course, the coalition does support manufacturing businesses—small businesses and medium businesses—across the country. That is our strength, particularly when in government.

Unfortunately, Labor have scrapped the strategy and are attempting to replace it with their National Reconstruction Fund, which really is just a slush bucket to reward their union mates and fund their election commitments. The claim by Labor that the coalition does not support manufacturing, because we opposed the market intervention of a gas price cap and because we oppose their Reconstruction Fund, is complete and utter rubbish. Manufacturers and other businesses know that the coalition is their friend and the ALP is their enemy. I know we will have more to say on this program in the next bill for debate in the House. However, it's essential that investment in Australia's key sectors is not designed on a political whim, eroding investment decisions and confidence in the sector.

We designed our competitive grant for Australia's Economic Accelerator program around three stage gates. The first gate was the initial proof of concept—the idea and testing stage to see if the project is viable. The second was to support the idea through what, in research terms, is known as the 'valley of death'. This is typically the development phase, where significant investment is required and where the greatest risk of projects not proceeding lies. The final stage was to support the project through to commercial realisation. That is about getting the product through to a stage where it's ready to be sold in the marketplace. At each stage of the process, projects would be evaluated for their probability of success, with fewer projects being funded but those funded receiving larger funding and greater industry contribution. This would ensure we were supporting projects with the greatest likelihood of success. The commercialisation component—effectively stage 3, or the final stage—would be further supported through the $150 million commitment to CSIRO's Main Sequence venture. The Australia's Economic Accelerator program will work to attract projects with high commercialisation potential at the proof-of-concept or proof-of-scale level of commercial readiness.

To support this new grant opportunity and ensure its success, the bill also establishes a governance framework which includes a new advisory board. The board will have up to eight expert representatives from the government, industry, business and research sectors. The advisory board will oversee the program, drawing upon its collective experience to drive the translation and commercialisation of university research. Importantly, the advisory board will review grant applications and make recommendations to the Minister for Education to fund projects in accordance with the university research commercialisation strategy.

The board will also be required to provide an annual report to the Minister for Education for presentation to this parliament. This report will cover the achievements and outcomes of translating and commercialising research. The report will also look at the regulatory, financial and cultural barriers that exist to commercialising our research and will propose opportunities to address those.

The next and final element of the bill amends the Higher Education Support Act to allow for grants to be made under part 2 and part 3 of the act to support the new industry led study and postgraduate research. This will enable the creation of industry led programs that pave the way for clear and structured career pathways. It will also embed researchers in industry settings, enhancing research commercialisation and translation skills, building research careers within industry and, more importantly, building movement and cohesion between academia and industry. Industry will benefit from the opportunities to host PhD students, bolstering their ability to harness ideas and concepts for innovation, as well as opening pathways to recruit high-calibre graduates. This will be further enhanced by a new suite of fellowships that will recognise and reward academics who collaborate with industry, helping to drive the translation of their research and creating new pathways for their work.

These scholarships provide the foundation for a career in innovation, and that's what we want. Further reforms to fellowship schemes administered by the Australian Research Council will build these career pathways in our universities. It should no longer be the case that a researcher who wishes to pursue the application of their research has to take time out from their academic career to do so. The new innovation fellowships will ensure that time spent working with industry or in a start-up business is part of an academic career, with just as much value and recognition as career pathways focused on teaching and research.

The coalition knows that by investing in research commercialisation we are driving Australia's economic growth and future. The development of new technologies and knowledge improves production processes, reduces costs and creates innovative new products for export. At the time of our announcement of the university research commercialisation package there was widespread sector support across the university sector and throughout industry. The Group of Eight universities was supportive of our measures, saying in February:

The commercialisation of Australia's world class university research is key to the nation's growth and prosperity, meeting the challenges ahead and enhancing the lives of future generations.

Science and Technology Australia said that our policy would 'turbocharge Australia's research commercialisation success'. Universities Australia chair, Professor John Dewar AO, said:

Additional investment to assist the commercialisation of great ideas, at crucial stages, is very welcome …

The Business Council of Australia said our:

… $2.2 billion package will significantly improve Australia's ability to commercialise our best ideas and innovations, scaling them up to create exciting new industries, new exports and new highly skilled jobs for Australians.

Let me close by thanking everyone involved in our work on research commercialisation, including the expert panel of business and university leaders that the coalition appointed. Those leaders are Professor Michelle Simmons AO, director of the Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology; Dr Alan Finkel AO, who was Australia's Chief Scientist of; and then Dr Cathy Foley AO, Australia's Chief Scientist; Ms Laura Tyler, chief technical officer at BHP; Mr Dig Howitt, CEO and president of Cochlear; Professor Paul Welling CBE, vice-chancellor of the University Of Wollongong; Ms Shemara Wikramanayake, managing director and chief executive officer of Macquarie Group; Professor Deborah Terry AO, vice-chancellor of the University of Queensland; Mr Jeff Connolly, chairman and CEO of Siemens Australia and New Zealand, and Mr Andrew Stevens, chair of Industry Innovation and Science Australia.

Our thanks go also to the universities and their research faculties, with many researchers providing us with much-needed practical examples of how and what we can change to be better. Our thanks go also to the Department of Education, particularly the higher education and research divisions, for all of your support, research and guidance as to the practical applications of our ideas.

Finally—and I won't do this often—I will thank the Labor government and Minister Clare, the Minister for Education, for continuing our significant reforms and investment in this space. This bill, and all of the supporting elements of the coalition's university research commercialisation package, ensures that the government investment into research is targeted and supporting areas of national priority. Our investment supports the country economically and our communities more broadly and provides a return on that investment that creates the jobs for our future generations. I commend this bill to the House.

Debate adjourned.

Ordered that the resumption of the debate be made an order of the day for a later hour.