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

I thank Senator McKenzie—one of this chamber's pre-eminent advocates for education, research and innovation—for her question. Central to the Turnbull government's plan for enhanced investment, innovation, growth and jobs is, absolutely, innovation and science as part of our National Innovation and Science Agenda. It has been a year of awesome outcomes for the innovation and science agenda. A year of awesome outcomes! We have delivered over the past year some $10.7 billion in funding to secure higher education research over the forward estimates. We have provided certainty—not just for a couple of years but 10 years of certainty of funding for Australia's critical research infrastructure—including through $1.5 billion of support for the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy, which provides job certainty and security for 1,700 researchers and technical experts and provides benefits for around 35,000 Australian and international researches who use these critical facilities.

On top of this, we have Alan Finkel, the Chief Scientist, developing a road map of critical national scale research infrastructure, so that we can set the long-term direction for what is required to invest in and develop our research capabilities, supporting innovation into the future. This is complemented by: an additional $16 million for 10 NCRIS projects across urban infrastructure, bioscience, telecommunications and health; new streamlined arrangements for university research block grants coming into effect from 1 January next year; an additional $180 million for incentives for engagement with industry and end users by our universities; and new arrangements for the ARC linkage grants for continuous application to make it easier for engagement between universities and businesses in the future.