Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

Australia has great ingenuity and great accomplishments in our research. As the Chief Scientist himself has said, we do need to ensure that we realise a greater share of economic benefits from our research breakthroughs.

The Innovation and Science Agenda is providing an additional $1.1 billion over the forward estimates through the entire life cycle of innovation, and it puts universities at the centre of the economic transformation the Australian economy needs to undertake. That is why, as I said, we are re-balancing the incentives in research block grants in line with the findings of the Watt review. We equally recognise the importance of pure research and its critical relationship, so what we are working to do is to get the balance right—to ensure that all Australians can share in the economic benefits of the research that they fund through their tax dollars. That is why we are developing a new impact measure around research. (Time expired)