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Turnbull wants innovation back on the agenda


The term “innovation” was absent from this year’s budget, a further $1.35 billion was cut from the research and development (R&D) tax incentive and last week the Coalition said it would have a second crack at passing its R&D tax incentive reforms, which include a controversial intensity test.

When Scott Morrison took over as prime minister in 2018, he also removed innovation from the ministry responsibilities – Karen Andrews was instead made industry, science and technology minister. The move was criticised by Labor politicians and the start-up sector at the time.

Now, four years this month since Mr Turnbull announced his flagship innovation statement, he says it’s time for the government to do a review of what worked and what didn’t under the National Innovation and Science Agenda.

The government, just like business, has to focus on the goal, but be very flexible and dynamic in how it’s achieved.

Malcolm Turnbull

“When I launched NISA, there were 24 measures. I was asked whether they would all succeed and I said no, I didn’t think they would … I knew for some of them there would prove to be better ways of achieving the goals, in which case we would shamelessly plagiarise the other approaches and replace the things that weren’t working, with things that were,” he said.

“The government, just like business, has to focus on the goal, but be very flexible and dynamic in how it’s achieved.

“This area has to be constantly under review. Promoting innovation should be a preoccupation of government and every department of government.”

Rather than just being about “young people in T-shirts”, Mr Turnbull said a core part of an innovation culture was having a government administration that recognised it was going through a time of unprecedented change and needed to be prepared to adapt.

“I’m not in a position to give a review item by item, but there’s some things that we know have worked well – the investment incentives, the new funds for the CSIRO innovation fund that’s now Main Sequence Ventures has done very well, and ditto for the biomedical translation fund. We’re also getting good feedback on the changes to the insolvency laws.

“[But] in terms of ensuring more primary research is commercialised, it’s too early to say. I’d keep a close watch on that because it needs a combination of financial incentives and cultural change and compared to societies like the US, Europe and even the UK, our universities are commercialising much less research than others.”

The Melt, located in Lake Macquarie, NSW, will be a hub for hardware engineering projects and will include the country’s first industrial prototyping lab. It is estimated to add $50 million to the local economy within two years and create 50 jobs.

The centre is a joint venture between Lake Macquarie economic development company Dantia and engineering company Ampcontrol.

One of the early residents of The Melt will be med-tech company Respia, which is building a paediatric asthma monitor for children. This will be trialled at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Sydney.

While Australia is known for its software success stories such as Atlassian and Canva, local entrepreneurs are also responsible for innovations such as the Cochlear implant and the black box flight recorder.

Mr Turnbull, whose current focus is on investing in technology companies and supporting the local start-up ecosystem, said there was no reason Australian founders couldn’t emulate the success of previous hardware companies.

“I don’t think there’s any reason for us not to be as innovative and successful in hardware as we have been in software,” he said.

“I have a very strongly held belief that wherever you can encourage innovation, you should.

“Some investors may lose money invariably, some will do very well, but everyone learns skills, gets valuable experience and overall it’s a productive exercise.”



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