Sarah Henderson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure that I speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Australia's Economic Accelerator) Bill 2022 today as the shadow minister for education. The coalition supports this bill, which is the reintroduction of measures introduced by us which lapsed at the election. On behalf of the coalition, I thank the government for proceeding with our bill, which supports our world-class researchers, universities and industries to deliver for our nation.

My former colleague the Hon. Alan Tudge, as the previous minister for education, undertook a review of the government's significant investment in research to identify ways in which we could drive greater benefits for our economy. This work looked at the research undertaken here in Australia by some of our brightest academic minds and the potential to support these ideas through the commercialisation phase. What we discovered was that, whilst we undertake world-leading research and publish more than 100,000 academic papers, we don't do a lot with those beyond the initial exploration.

The ideas generated at universities are incredible, and we are renowned around the globe for inventions like the electronic pacemaker, invented by Dr Mark Lidwill and physicist Edgar Booth in the 1920s; the use of penicillin by Australian scientist Howard Florey in 1939; the black box flight recorder, invented in the 1950s by Dr David Warren, which is now installed on every aircraft; and the cochlear implant, developed by Professor Graeme Clark in the 1970s, which to date has been used on about 750,000 people across the world, absolutely changing lives. The list goes on, but these inventions alone demonstrate how we can assist Australian researchers to translate their amazing ideas into commercial applications to meet Australia's and the world's greatest challenges. This will not only highlight Australia's incredible research on the world stage but also provide a boost to our productivity and create 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: 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.