Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Labor support this bill, which essentially implements policies we announced before the election. The bill facilitates the transition of the Innovation Australia board to a new body, Innovation and Science Australia, and provides legislative authority for Commonwealth spending on science, research and innovation programs.

Innovation and Science Australia mirrors the agency announced in our policy, Innovate Australia, and is intended to provide independent advice to the government on innovation policy. We are pleased that the Turnbull government has taken this approach, and we look forward to working with the new agency in the future.

As senators would be aware, 'innovation' became a buzzword after Mr Turnbull replaced Mr Abbott as Prime Minister in September last year. The word had been all but banned under Mr Abbott, but under Mr Turnbull its use suddenly seemed to become almost compulsory. It is a good thing that the government now accepts that a modern economy must be an innovative economy. That said, however, there is much more to fostering a genuine culture of innovation than talking about start-ups, disruption and gee-whiz technology, as the newly installed Mr Turnbull liked to do.    The government has yet to show that it can get past its obsession with gee-whizzery.

A comprehensive innovation policy should aim at transforming the economy, industry by industry and firm by firm. That is the approach needed to make Australia more globally competitive and to create the high-skill, high-wage jobs of the future. It is an approach that proceeds incrementally, but an incremental approach is not a piecemeal approach. Yet, piecemeal tinkering is all the government has offered since it announced its National Innovation and Science Agenda in December last year.

The Abbott government ripped more than $3 billion from science, research and innovation programs. NISA has restored only $1 billion of that investment in the nation's future. This is innovation-lite, and it is not enough to create the culture of innovation that Australia needs in the wake of the mining boom. Labor is firmly committed to building that culture. It is why during the election campaign we announced investment of more than a billion dollars in science and research, on top of our commitments in schools, TAFE and universities. For Labor, fostering innovation is bound up with our commitment to social democracy. It is about building an Australia that not only creates wealth but where all have the opportunity to share in that wealth and realise their full human potential. We will support any measure that contributes to achieving this goal. In that spirit, we support this bill.