Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today, the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation, and pay respect to their Elders past and present.

I also pay my respects to any First Nations people here today.

And I recognise their continuing contribution to science and technology in this country over 60,000 years of knowledge-building.

Thank you to ATSE for the invitation to speak tonight and well done to Katherine Woodthorpe and Kylie Walker and the team for pulling this together.

And a quick shoutout to some important people joining here tonight:

• The current chief scientist Cathy Foley, and her predecessor Alan Finkel.
• Doug Hilton, the head of CSIRO.
• Lily D’Ambrosio, the Victorian Climate Change Minister.
• Bridget Vallence from the State opposition.

Introduction

I’m particularly pleased that tonight we’re joined also by three generations of the Clunies Ross family – Adrian Clunies Ross … your son … and your grand-daughter.

Adrian’s father, Sir Ian Clunies Ross, needs no introduction to this audience.

But events like tonight are a good opportunity to reflect on his legacy.

Sir Ian was born in Bathurst in 1899 – just four years after another famous son of Bathurst, Ben Chifley, our 16th Prime Minister.

They shared a birthplace and they shared a vision of government as an engine of rising living standards.

That science holds the key to a better future, from combatting disease to modernising our economy.

And that government’s job is to unlock that future, working between science and industry.

With that approach, Chifley and Clunies Ross laid the foundation for generations of prosperity and opportunity. 

The Future Made in Australia agenda our government has laid out builds on those foundations.

Working with industry to translate our world-class know-how in prosperity for coming generations.

Making more things here, using the best of our know-how.

Innovation

Everyone in this room has an important role to play in how we do that.

The symposium ATSE held before tonight’s dinner is a great example of how.

We need some blue-sky thinking about what the next couple of decades are going to look like, and how we respond.

And we need practical action.

Like everyone here, the government is very focused on fixing up our languishing national R&D spend.

The Strategic examination of R&D we announced at the last budget is a critical piece of work.

We’re very close to announcing Terms of Reference and a review panel.

But we can’t fix the problem unless we have the facts.

And for a while now, we have not had a good understanding of the barriers holding back R&D investment in this country.

This is something I turned my attention to quickly to when I came in as Minister.

Tonight I can announce the results.

Tomorrow we will be publishing a revived set of Australian Innovation Statistics, something the last government discontinued.

This new-look report will be better – more concise, more analytical, more useful to help us get to the facts.

Because I know it will be of such interest, I am going to share a few insights from the report with you.

It confirms that our investment as a nation in R&D is not where it should be, languishing still at 1.7 percent of our GDP.

And it describes why in important detail.

For example, while we are producing more scientific papers and engaging in more research collaboration with overseas partners, the number of Australian co-invented patents is falling.

The number of Australian businesses engaged in innovative activities has remained on a post-covid high.

But business investment in R&D has barely budged … against a background of slowing capital investment overall.

These are valuable insights into what many in this room will have suspected, the gap between our world-class research and businesses at the coal face.

The report analyses the reasons for our poor performance in R&D, and this is important.

Access to funds has overtaken cost and lack of access to skills as the main barrier for business investment into the commercialisation of  R&D.

This is concerning.

It shows that businesses want to innovate.

But capital is proving hard to get.

This is reflected in the report, which shows a fall in the number of venture capital deals, and aggregate deal value, over the last few years.

I can assure this report only reinforces the government’s determination to turn this situation around.

Yes, the report found government investment in R&D is up by almost 5 percent, outpacing private R&D spending growth.

But this is only part of the story.

What this report really highlights is the importance of the $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund.

It is often lost in the debate that the NRF’s central aim is to crowd-in private investment.

Lowering risk, priming the pump for investors to get behind innovative businesses in this country.

The board is brimming with venture capitalists and governance experts and technologists.

It will make active investment decisions that align to its remit to analyse and assess large proposals to help grow our nation’s manufacturing capabilities.

It is not another government agency investing directly in emerging businesses, as our Industry Growth Program does.

It is also a catalyst for increasing the sorry state of our R&D system.

The report released tomorrow is further evidence of why this is important.

And it’s also another reminder of why we are investing in one of the world’s first fault-tolerant quantum computers to be built in Brisbane.

This is a joint investment with the Queensland government, that will make us a world leader in this critical technology.

Helping us produce one of the most powerful computers on the planet that can crack problems that conventional computing power can’t achieve.

This will give us an unparalleled engine for R&D for decades into the future.

Putting in the investment now to build prosperity for the next generation, just as Ian Clunies Ross and Ben Chifley would have done.

Joining Up

That includes getting the settings right in our wider science agenda.

Since coming to government, we’ve made strong progress on that front too.

Importantly, we updated the National Science and Research Priorities for the first time in a decade.

My thanks again to ATSE for the important role you played in that process.

We also delivered the first National Quantum Strategy.

The first National Robotics Strategy.

And the first National Battery Strategy.

We now have joined-up policies that mean we get maximum impact.

And we can get on with the job of turning our world-class know-how into an economic advantage.

That includes our plan to mobilise Australian industries to transform our energy system and move toward net zero.

This I know is also a key focus of many here tonight.

We supply around half the raw lithium for the global battery business.

And we have some of the best battery know-how in the world.

It just makes sense to do more processing and more manufacturing here.

And with our abundance of solar and wind, it just makes sense to invest in bringing more of this energy into our system.

Global Science and Technology Diplomacy Fund

Working with our neighbours and friends will be another important part of how we meet challenges such as climate change and better human health.

Earlier this year I was really happy to open the first round of our $40 million Global Science and Technology Diplomacy Fund.

Countries that work together to solve common problems become closer.

The fund is one of the important ways we will encourage more of this going forward with our close neighbours.

I want to thank ATSE who, along with the Australian Academy of Science, is jointly administering this important initiative.

Your work will build on a strong legacy of collaboration with our friends in the region.

Like the work Monash Uni is doing to combat mosquito-borne diseases across the Pacific.

And the CSIRO’s work in Vietnam to reduce plastic waste.

I look forward to seeing more practical examples of collaboration in action.

Indigenous Knowledge

I’d like now to congratulate the new fellows joining the Academy this year.

It is an impressive list.

Rear-Admiral Rachel Durbin, the head engineer of the Navy, Josep Canadell, chief research scientist at CSIRO just to name two.

I’d like to make special mention of another new fellow Alex Brown, a Yuin man who’s recognised for his work tackling chronic disease in First Nations communities.

As we’ll hear a little bit later, this year is the second year ATSE will be awarding a prize for Indigenous knowledge.

This is a great move.

When we updated the National Science Priorities we deliberately included elevating First Nations knowledge as one of our five priorities.

The Prime Minister’s Science Prizes now also have a specific First Nations knowledge prize too.

As I said at the top of my speech, First Nations people’s contribution stretches back 65,000 years.

They are this nation’s original innovators, adapting to life on the harsh continent we now all call home.

Correcting the blinkered view of First Nations’ contributions is something I and the government are very serious about.

I’m heartened to see organisations like ATSE take this seriously.

Conclusion

I would like to again congratulate ATSE and recipients of this year’s ATSE Prizes for their contributions to Australia’s science sector, and for celebrating the outstanding achievement of our researchers working in science, technology and engineering.

You all set the standards for excellence in applied science and help inspire the next generation of Australian scientists, technologists, and engineers.

Thank you.