Minister: 

Well thanks everyone for being here and Tony, thank you for the invitation down here to Avicena. This actually used to be the Singer sewing machine factory back in Perth in the day.  And I'm reliably informed by Tony that what made Singer Sewing Machines cutting-edge technology of the day was how fast they were. So, what makes this cutting edge technology and literally cutting edge technology for anywhere in the world is simply how many tests for COVID that it can do. And what it does Tony, I'm reliably informed is test potentially up to 100,000 people for COVID in a 24 hour period with 100 per cent accuracy. So that is leading technology anywhere in the world. And at the moment, Tony and his team here in the old Singer sewing machine manufacturing premises can make four of these machines and with this grant from the Morrison Government they should be able to make 20 a month - 20 a month.  And the demand for these remarkable pieces of equipment worldwide as you can imagine, will be absolutely enormous. So this is just one grant in part of the Morrison Government's massive program to revitalise and grow what is a very healthy manufacturing sector in Australia; a $1.3 billion dollar program of grants, the modern manufacturing initiative. This is round one in the Modern Manufacturing Initiative - a $200 million round – and this is part of the medical manufacturer grants round.  There’ve been five medical manufacturer grants and two of those have been in Western Australia. I might just mention that the other successful West Australian recipient is Cyclowest in Bayswater and I want to just say congratulations to them as well.  They’re using $2.5 million in grants from the Morrison Government to scale up their facility which produces therapy and radio pharmaceuticals that contribute to helping physicians diagnose medical conditions including cancer. But today of course we’re at Avicena – this absolutely remarkable machine, which in its productive guises could be put on the back of trucks; taken to airports; to sporting events.  And as we live with COVID and other pathogens in the future, what we will see, through the great work Tony of you and your team; through the contributions of the Morrison Government to upscaling the production of this prototype is that Australia and Western Australia and Perth is now at the cutting edge of global manufacture of the best system of testing for COVID that will exist anywhere in the world. It will mean employment here in Perth; it'll mean a vibrant manufacturing export for WA and for Australia, and maybe Tony, you might just want to give a bit of a description of the product – what it does, what it can do and how exciting it is.

Tony Fitzgerald (Managing Director and Co-founder Avicena Systems):

Thank you very much, Minister and thank you very much to you and the Government for backing the MMI grant scheme to encourage advanced manufacture in Australia, particularly of medical products. This is a wholly Australian development that has a global application. It's a system that can help revitalise and reopen business in tourism; hospitality; in studies and education and in a whole array of different applications.  And I think it was very appropriate the comment about Singer because Mr Singer managed to get 900 stitches a minute out of his sewing machine and the innovation here of course is the speed and the convenience of the system. I think one of the lessons that this pandemic has taught us, amongst many lessons, is the need for independence in supply of key manufacturing items in this country.  We've seen all of these problems with supply chains and that is a very, very obvious in the medical area, so being able to make our own diagnostic equipment in Australia and provide for our own needs in the times of the pandemic I think is very important and that's why this MMI initiative to fund advanced manufacturing is so important. I'd like to thank the team and we've got all of our workforce here from our electricians; our engineers; our software designers; our chemists, they're all here and they have all done their bit over the past nine months to be able to develop this piece of Australian technology that we can now bring to the world. So thank you all very much for coming and giving us an opportunity to show it. And thank you for the Government’s support of the initiative.

Question:

Tony, you gave us a great explanation before during the demonstration but just talk us through exactly how does it work?

Tony Fitzgerald:

So instead of taking the horrible nasal swabs, people can donate their own saliva sample and my colleague Paul Watt showed the little scoop - so you simply give a saliva sample into a tube - that is quickly inactivated - heat inactivated to make sure it's safe and then loaded on the plates at the front of the machine. The machine processes it through - there's an incubation period which is very important because that's what's actually amplifying the piece of viral RNA in a sample.  That’s then detected by a camera-scanning operation and the colour change is recorded and then of course if it's, if it's positive or negative that information is uploaded to the cloud and then disseminated. So it's a very straightforward, comfortable and convenient process. You don't have to wait overnight and you don't have to have anything stuck up your nose.

Question:

What gives the ability for it to be a rapid test?

Tony Fitzgerald:

Well it's a combination actually of the saliva sampling and in particular the robotics and the design. This is an entirely new way of approaching processing of molecular samples.  So it's continuous loading, it's not in a batch where you start them all at once and finish them all at once. So the robot and the software in there knows where those plates are so it can optimize when they're taken in and taken out and that speeds up the process - so it's constantly moving. And that's really the innovation and that's what we've, we've applied to patent. 

Question:

And what does this mean, compared to PCR testing?

Tony Fitzgerald:

In the testing that we've done it's equivalent to the best of the PCR machines. So we've taken the, the one that's ranked ‘one’ by the FDA, and we've done direct comparisons between results process using this technology versus PCR. So, once on sensitivity and specificity it's equivalent or in some cases slightly better.

Question:

And compared to the other rapid-antigen tests that are being used around the world, how does this compare?

Tony Fitzgerald:

There's a lot of misunderstanding about these rapid tests.  They're very, very good at detecting high viral loads, so if you are obviously symptomatic and you have high viral loads those rapid tests can detect it. The problem comes when you're testing a big number of people - and some people have very low viral loads - they're very poor for that, generally, so some of them are less than 50% so you can almost flip a coin on the low viral loads. So the PCR technology and LAMP, which is this technology are both designed to amplify the RNA of the virus and it’s that amplification process that improves the accuracy. So that's the reason why, you would you could use the rapid tests in certain applications - but if you want to screen at airports, big events where you've got a lot of people - symptomatic and asymptomatic - you need something like this.

Question:

So this would pick up someone with a low viral load?

Tony Fitzgerald:

Yes it would to the same level as a PCR machine.

Question:

This might be a better question for the Minister, but if this is accurate and as quick as you're saying why aren’t these machines being sent to New South Wales and being used to test people over east?

Tony Fitzgerald:

Well we hope they will be. The process only started less than 12 months ago so, so, my colleague Paul Ostergaard developed this in his art studio less than a year ago. So the process has been ….

(unclear chatting)

Question:

What does this funding mean for you now that you've got the Commonwealth backing, how do you plan to use the money?

Tony Fitzgerald:

Absolutely. Well the endorsement of the Federal Government is very helpful for us, as is the enhancement of the machine and the further testing of the machine.  But we would like to be able to present it, federally and obviously to the states.  We would we would love to have it in the airports in Australia and we are already starting discussions to get that done here in West Australia.

Minister:

I think the answer to that question is that this is one of those classic businesses where demand is exceeding the ability to supply. And so these grants are unbelievably competitive and, you know, the pride as a Minister that I take in seeing a fantastic West Australian company like this develop this technology inside 12 months and have worldwide demand so high that they just can't build the things faster, and then as a Federal Government, being able to step in and help them scale up to what is effectively mass production so that they can export these things across Australia and throughout the world and improve people's lives. And as Tony was saying this isn't a one trick production; this can be adapted for different pathogens - Hepatitis B, Dengue fever, so its adaptability for the way in which we go about dealing with disease and pandemics for decades is absolutely remarkable and Tony and his team fit into this broader picture of manufacturing. So in the last May quarter 11,000 new jobs were created in manufacturing, so that means for the May quarter this year in 2021 there were more jobs in manufacturing than there were in the May quarter in 2019. So there are more jobs in manufacturing post COVID than they were in 2019 pre COVID. There's not another country on Earth that wouldn't love to be able to say that. And we want to just keep that going. And people like Tony and his team, with some assistance from the Government to help them ramp up to scale is just part of that remarkable story.

Question:

And Minister, what does this mean in terms of travel?

Minister:

Well, I think what, we're looking at the future of travel – behind us.  Because if we can build these machines quickly and install them at airports then we've got the capability to know the status of people who are traveling.  So a very important part of future traveling is going to be able to know rapidly the status of people who are traveling. So I think we're looking at the future of international travel, not just with respect to COVID, but with respect to any other pathogen. So it's going to be a huge part and of course being able to mass produce machines like this and do so as cheaply and as efficiently as possible is going to mean that the cost of that testing isn't going to impact on the consumer to the extent that it obviously is at the moment. 

Question:

So Tony have you got some orders in for airports already and any idea when that might actually…

Tony Fitzgerald:

We've got our first installation in Spain, as I mentioned, that's just been just been installed and delivered.  We've got two that we've just built which are both going Hungary. One of them is staying here for a short period of time and our goal at the moment is to get a pilot going at Perth Airport. 

Question:

And when might that be?

Tony Fitzgerald:

Well we're very hopeful before the end of this calendar year. So we would initially like to do a pilot.  We do have some overseas interest from airports and we're pursuing that now but we'd like to get some local data and some local experience and logistics at the airport and then bring into the world.

Question:

Are you in discussions with the State Government about that?

Tony Fitzgerald:

Yes, we have

Question:

Are they on board?

Tony Fitzgerald:

Well they've been very supportive. They in fact helped in the prototyping and the funding of the prototyping so we've had, we've had very good support from Government and now we've had this major initiative from the Federal Government.

Question:

How much does one of these machines cost in the private sector and could you down the track, perhaps see you know, at a business, employees required to get tested, with one of these on site?

Tony Fitzgerald:

Sure we'd probably look at a smaller version of the system, with this, this is modular, by the way, I didn't explain that when we were looking it through.  But when we ship this it's actually taken into two pieces so we're looking potentially at a smaller version that can be mobile as well and that would be I think a very interesting application for many places in the world perhaps some of the remote locations.

Question: 

Want do you think of the idea of letting COVID run in the community before everyone's vaccinated?

Minister: 

Well, I'm not, I'm not sure that that's precisely how they've characterized the, the approach.

Question:

The New South Wales Health Department said yesterday. Um, said yesterday that if the ongoing Sydney lockdown continued to prove ineffective at ending the state’s outbreak, at some point we're going to move to a stage where we're going to have to accept that the virus has a life, which will continue in the community.

Minister:

Well I've listened intently to the Premier, the New South Wales Premier’s media conference this morning. I think the messaging that she was providing was precisely the opposite of that, so not quite sure what messaging that is meant to be.

Question:

Minister just onto vaccines, has Australia approached any other countries about a possible vaccines swap like we’ve seen between South Korea and Israel?

Minister: 

Look, I think that would have to be directed at the Health Minister, I mean, you know, every effort is being made to ensure that there's ample supplies of vaccines, I mean obviously that is a matter of massive demand worldwide. We're at 9% of two doses at the moment of the population. That's an enormous effort. But I think that's something that would have to go direct to the Health Minister.

Question:

And when do you expect that Australia will have an mRNA facility?

Minister:

Yes, so the 16th of this month is the close of the approach to market process so I've been given regular updates about the, the inputs that are coming in so far, and there has been a lot of interest in that approach to market process so we'll assess that. Discussions directly with Moderna have been continuing throughout that approach to market process so I can say that there has been a lot of interest. I can say what I've said in Parliament a number of times, the estimates about when a fully equipped production and manufacturing facility with scale - so the ability to produce 25 million plus doses of an mRNA vaccine for COVID or like pathogens would be able to be up and running. Estimates, at the very quickest time frame are around the six to nine months, at the outer timeframe three plus years. In the middle is 12 to 18 months, I think it would be it would be exceedingly optimistic, those short timeframes. I think the middle timeframes are the most likely. But the two major pieces of that problem - do you have the manufacturer capability, and do you have the access or ownership of the IP - so some people or consortium or joint ventures will have very strong access to manufacturer capability, and will have weaker proposals with respect to their access or ownership of IP. Others will have stronger access and ownership to IP, and perhaps not as direct ability to show their strength in manufacture. So, you know, there are going to be strengths and weaknesses to different consortia or joint ventures applications, and their ability to demonstrate the timeliness of their productive capacity is going to depend in a very coarse summary on those two things. So we'll do that assessment starting next week.

Question: 

Has the Federal Government ever been approached to utilize that Pfizer facility in Bentley to manufacture vaccines? I know it is intravenous medicines but have you ever been approached?

Minister:

When you say approached, look a number of people have nominated that as a, as a potential. Yes. I can't go into whether or not that's forming formally one of the, the applications in the consortia or joint ventures yet because obviously that’s a commercial in confidence process but you know that there’s facilities in Adelaide, Queensland, Victoria. All of them have been mooted at one or other point in time as being possible manufacturing locations. So yeah, look, there's been a lot of interest, a lot of interest and geographically there's been a number of locations that that interest has come from. Okay?

Question:

Sorry one last question. Mark McGowan's idea of introducing a permanent hard border to New South Wales, if they don’t crush or kill this virus, or until the majority of West Australians are fully vaccinated against COVID. Do you think that's a good idea that he's proposed?

Minister:

Look, I think it's a very fluid situation in New South Wales, and I, I think that what we're all hoping, whether we're West Australians or Queenslanders or particularly people living in New South Wales, we're hoping that the Premier and the New South Wales Government can crush and kill this and do so quickly. I mean the New South Wales economy is absolutely critical to the entirety of Australia. I think we're just wishing them all the best in their efforts to get this thing under control. So first and foremost, let's as Australians, give them every assistance, hope they do well, make sure that they, they get this thing under control. It's just a critical part of Australia, and we want them to make sure that they can crush and kill this thing. And look, they've, they've done a remarkable job, New South Wales, it is a massive place, a diverse community, a multicultural community, probably the hardest place in Australia, without question, to contain and control this virus and so far they've had an outstanding performance in contact tracing, in testing. They, you know, we wish them all the best in these critical next days and weeks, and every assistance is going to be offered from the federal government to make sure that they can crush and kill this thing and that's the most important thing for every Australian but particularly if you live in New South Wales. Okay

Question:

So do you think the idea of a permanent hard border though is a good one?

Minister:

I think it's too, it's too early to say, would be my answer to that question.

Question:

Just on the WACA pool, do you think…

Minister:

One more on the WACA, yeah…

Question:

Do you think that it’s financially irresponsible?

Minister:

No I don't. Look, I just think that the job of governments with something as critical as the redevelopment of that part of Perth, and the WACA is to cooperate and get things moving, federal government, state government and local government. And I've got to say, the federal and state governments, and I had this conversation with the State minister yesterday, have worked unbelievably well together, and cooperatively together with the WACA to put a really complex deal together, which will create jobs, revitalize that part of the city, build a new home for cricket. Everyone's a winner out of this. And yet one layer of government is kind of putting a big old spanner in the works. Now I think this is going to happen anyway because the level of cooperation between the Commonwealth Government and State Government is so strong. But what I don't understand is why would you want to be involved in stopping something from happening, particularly at a time in Australia's economic history, where we've needed construction, development, jobs more than ever before. Like the first priority of government whether you are local, federal or state is get things going, don't stop them. So it's a really disappointing attitude from local government, with respect to the WACA. But I just think the level of cooperation between the Commonwealth and the State Government is so strong, and with cricket in WA that this thing is going to happen one way or the other. It'd be great if local government and the City of Perth got on board, but at the moment they are being very difficult about this. Thanks.

 

ENDS