Opening of the CSIRO Lab 22 Innovation Centre

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
19 November 2015

Opening of the CSIRO Lab 22 Innovation Centre;

Christopher Pyne:… To Keith McLean, Larry Marshall, Andy Stevens, head of theAdvanced Manufacturing Industry Growth Centre. Ladies and gentlemen, and I’m pleased to see there are some ladies here inside CSIRO, a famously male dominated part of the Government, but that is obviously changing and that’s a good thing. I’m very pleased to be here to launch Lab 22 Innovation Centre.

Larry knows this but nobody else would know, I grew up with CSIRO. I lived next door to man called Dr Oliver Mayo, who was head of one of the divisions of CSIRO, and used to ride his bike to the main institute every day, and he moved to Sydney to be the head of one of the divisions. And Oliver is a very urbane, sophisticated Adelaidian, and he always inculcated in my youth, from the age of three to when I left that house at the age of 25, the importance of science, research, innovation – although it wasn’t really called innovation then – the work of CSIRO and its involvement and practical applications. Because, being an Adelaidian, he often used to talk about how we have to turn our disadvantages into advantages through innovation and creativity, because of our distance from the rest of the world, because of the smallness of our population. And the investment that all Governments have made for decades in skills and training, education, have always borne fruit and are bearing fruit, and one of the places that they bear fruit is at CSIRO, and CSIRO is the flagship of my portfolio’s involvement with research and industry.

It’s a wonderful brand, CSIRO, it’s probably the best brand in this portfolio. And Keith was talking about what the Prime Minister has been saying about innovation. The Prime Minister isn’t just saying it, we are going to be doing it, and in early December we will announce a National Innovation and Science Agenda. It truly is the greatest time in a long time to be a scientist or a researcher in Australia [indistinct], but we obviously have a long way to go. We’re coming off a very low base, which a good thing for a new Minister because it can’t get worse when you are 33 out of 33 in the OECD for commercialising research. We’ll also be focusing on raising capital and how to change the tax system, bankruptcy laws, the treatment of depreciation, et cetera, in the actual eco-system; to not just have new spending measures which everyone always applauds, but in fact a longer-term cultural shift around enabling risk-taking Australian start ups and businesses, using our research and development dollar better, and making it work for us as a nation.

We’ll also be focusing on talents and skills. We obviously want a very highly educated workforce. We have 20,000 Australians in Silicon Valley, and we want Australians to go overseas and study, and to work and to develop ideas – and I imagine many of the CSIRO engineers and scientists have spent time overseas, and they should – but we also want them to come back to Australia and start their businesses here and be part of our economy. So we need to find ways of encouraging them to do that.

And the final thing is the Government as an exemplar. We are, in the loose sense, the largest business in the economy. We are a $1.3 trillion economy – the Government has about $460 billion of spending. And therefore Malcolm’s view and my view is that we should be leveraging that extraordinary position in the economy to encourage high technology and advanced manufacturing and research and commericalisation of research. Rather than somehow seeing the use of the Government procurement power as a subject that we don’t want to talk about, that somehow might offend anyone, actually there’s lots we can do without offending any World Trade Organisation rules, without offending all sorts of different things that encourage Australian high technology industries, advanced manufacturing, jobs and growth in this country, and we’ll be doing that.

While I can’t reveal all the aspects of the NISA, the National Innovation and Science Agenda – I don’t know if that name will make it through to the end of the process, but that’s my working title – CSIRO will be big winners from the National Innovation and Science Agenda. My view has been, since I became the Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science, that if we have a great brand like CSIRO why would you push it to the back of the stage? Why wouldn’t you bring it right centre of the stage? Because if CSIRO is doing something, the public have great confidence in it. And while none of us are perfect, I’m sure we all make mistakes, I’m sure that in CSIRO over the decades there’s been wastage here or wastage there, overwhelmingly CSIRO’s work has been great for Australia and the world. And we need to bring it centre stage in this agenda because it will give us great credibility as a Government if CSIRO and the Government are working very closely together to do the things that I outline in the National Innovation and Science Agenda.

So here of course at Lab 22 I’ve sort of given you a general run through of what we’re thinking, but Lab 22 is doing great work already and will do even greater work in the future. Larry has decided to invest $6 million here. He is a great advantage to CSIRO. I understand you got your tenth business partner today, Alcoa, so CSIRO is doing its work by bringing business and science together. And it’s quite transformative, 3D printing is quite transformative. It will change- entirely change the way we think in so many parts of the economy, whether it’s advanced manufacturing, whether it’s health or medicine. I was at RMIT not very long ago and they were creating 3D printed hips. I mean, there is so many applications for this particular technology, and it’s great to see Australia at the forefront of it, and CSIRO at the forefront on it. So I’m very pleased to be here to launch it, and congratulations to the forward-thinking board, and executive that decided to invest in it. And I’m hoping you’ll all get a great boost out of the National Innovation and Science Agenda in a couple of weeks time.

Thank you very much, and I’m happy to declare Lab 22 Innovation Centre open.

[ends]