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Australia is a clever country – there’s no denying that.
We have our Nobel laureates, our breakthrough inventions, our long history of resourcefulness and ingenuity in the face of environmental adversity – a history stretching back to the beginnings of human settlement on this continent.
We publish ten times our per capita share of the world’s research papers and file four times our per capita share of the world’s patents.
These are great achievements, but this is not a time for glib self-congratulation.
The world is changing. The planet itself is changing as human activity disturbs the balance of nature. We are learning fast that altering the climate alters everything.
Our population is ageing. Our health is at the crossroads. Having triumphed over the diseases of want, we now find ourselves assailed by diseases of affluence.
The global economic order is being turned on its head –
- by the awakening of India, China, Brazil and Russia
- by the rapid development of countries like Thailand and Malaysia in our own region
- by the exponential growth of the international middle-class
- by the ICT revolution which began decades ago, but whose transformative power we are only beginning to appreciate now, as the technology becomes more sophisticated and more ubiquitous.
And some things seem never to change. We still have homelessness. We still have Australians unable to participate fully in the social and economic life of this country. We still live in a world where every day millions of children go hungry.
So my message is this – yes, we are a clever country, but no, that doesn’t mean we can take the afternoon off.
It means we put our cleverness to work. It means we build our intellectual capacity to tackle the challenges presented by our changing world. It means we harness our creativity to fashion a better future.
That’s what the Australia 2020 Summit was about, that’s what our Review of the National Innovation System is about, and that’s what the Australian Innovation Festival is about.
All three reflect our belief in the power of intelligence, the power of knowledge, and the power of ideas.
These are our most valuable resources, we have them in abundance, and if we husband them wisely, there is little we can’t achieve.
Because no matter how acute the challenges we may face, my outlook is optimistic. I belong to what has been for a century and more the party of optimism in this country – the party of hope.
Like my predecessors and like my colleagues, I believe the future can be better than the past.
But only if we work at it. Only if we gather our talents and put them to good use.
That’s why it is so important to increase our innovation capacity – our ability to generate and apply new ideas, new knowledge and new technologies.
Bringing innovation, industry, science, research into one portfolio was the first step.
NIS review
The innovation system review being chaired by Dr Terry Cutler is the next.
It will shape our approach to innovation for the next decade.
Public consultations occurred in March, with over 1,000 people taking part across the country.
They stressed the importance of skills and human capital, of national and international collaboration, and of going beyond the traditional science-based R&D model to consider innovation in all its forms.
After all, there is a place for innovation in every branch of industry and every area of Australian life.
It is not just about products and technologies; it’s also about processes and services.
It is not just about the next big thing; it’s also about baby-step improvements.
It is not just about the hard-edged world of boardrooms and laboratories; it’s also about the creative arts and humanities.
Earlier this month I appointed four international experts to assist the review panel.
One of them is Professor Alan Hughes from the University of Cambridge, who has already visited Australia to meet with Dr Cutler and his colleagues.
Professor Hughes is an expert in collaboration, including industry-university links, and measuring innovation – both of which emerged as big issues in the public consultations.
As well as sharing his knowledge and advice with the panel, he also met with me to discuss the innovation decision-making framework in the UK.
The other international experts will meet with the panel over the next three months.
The panel members are also working their own global networks and contacts for ideas and information.
For example, they will be picking the brains of Finland’s Dr Jari Kuusisto when he visits Australia next month.
He is an authority on intellectual property and innovation in services.
The service sector provides most of our jobs and generates most of our economic output, but there is evidence that it has not been adequately served by existing innovation support programs. This needs to be fixed.
Dr Kuusisto will also be speaking at events in Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane as part of the Australian Innovation Festival.
His visit gives us all the chance to learn something from the example of Finland – historically a resource-dependent country like Australia, but now one of the world’s most innovative nations.
The final date for written submissions to the innovation review is today (the 30th of April).
Dr Cutler and his colleagues have already started harvesting the submissions received so far for insights, problems, solutions and evidence.
They will conduct a series of workshops throughout May on topics requiring further discussion and closer examination.
These include public sector innovation, skills development and training, government procurement, and how we measure and set targets for innovation.
The workshops will also cover information markets and their legal and policy frameworks, national facilities and collections, funding models, and rural innovation.
The review panel will present a Green Paper to the government by the 31st of July, and the government will respond later in the year.
Innovation performance
This review is long overdue. As the OECD has pointed out: “Most of the rise in material standards of living since the industrial revolution has been the consequence of innovation.”
Yet Australia’s innovation performance in recent years has been ordinary.
The World Economic Forum’s latest Global Competitiveness Index ranks us twenty-second on innovation performance – behind neighbours and competitors such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia.
Two of our biggest problems are relatively low levels of business investment in R&D and weak links between public researchers and industry.
Our business R&D spending as a proportion of GDP is about two-thirds of the OECD average and one-third of what leading innovators such as Sweden achieve.
And we were recently ranked last out of twenty-six OECD countries for research collaboration between industry and universities, and second last for research collaboration between industry and public research organisations.
Australia is a small country. If we are to make the most of our innovation capacity, we need to get individuals, institutions and sectors working together. We need to concentrate activities and build critical mass across the innovation system.
The new portfolio of Innovation, Industry, Science And Research has been designed with that in mind.
It brings public sector research together with private sector R&D. It brings scientists and other researchers together with industry.
It brings responsibility for research projects, infrastructure and training under one umbrella.
Our aim in joining these elements up is to promote synergy, connectivity and the growth of knowledge networks.
The festival
This is also a major aim of the Australian Innovation Festival, with its focus on what it calls the four Cs of innovation – creativity, connections, collaboration and commercialisation.
In just six years, it has grown to become the biggest industry festival in Australia and the largest event of its type in the world.
It is recognised as the number one platform for promoting and celebrating Australian innovation and entrepreneurship – and 2008 looks like being its best year yet.
It is great to see communities all over Australia coming together to embrace innovation, and we are indebted to the Australian Innovation Festival, its supporters and its organisers for making it happen.
The future
The theme of this year’s festival is “innovation for our future”. I’d go a step further than that and say innovation is our future.
That’s why we want to create a diverse, pluralistic innovation system that nevertheless works as a unified whole. We want it to be robust, yet responsive to change. We want it to be equally capable of wielding global influence and addressing local needs.
Achieve that, and we will be well on the way to building the better future I talked about at the beginning.
A future in which Australia is productive, competitive and prosperous.
A future in which our communities are strong, our environment is protected, our culture is vibrant, and every individual has the chance to achieve their full potential.