RN Drive

19 Nov 2015 Transcipt

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
Interview with Patricia Karvelas on RN Drive

Thursday 19 November 2015


SUBJECT:
Innovation

Malcolm Turnbull: We have to work more agilely, more innovatively. We’re not seeking to proof ourselves against the future; we’re seeking to embrace it.

[End of excerpt]

Patricia Karvelas: So said Malcolm Turnbull as he unveiled his new ministry in September. We’ll get a fuller picture of what the PM means by those words when the Government’s innovation statement is released in a few weeks’ time but for those of you who can’t wait that long, I thought I’d ask the Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Christopher Pyne. Thanks for joining me and you haven’t been on RN Drive since your appointment, so congratulations.

Christopher Pyne: Thank you.

Patricia Karvelas: You wrote recently that innovation has to be more than just a collection of buzzwords and good intentions. How are you living up to that? What are your plans for innovation?

Christopher Pyne: Well Patricia, early in December we will launch- the Prime Minister and I- a national innovation and science agenda, which we’ve pulled together since I was the minister in the last eight weeks. It will be very comprehensive. It’s been consulted with very widely and it will address four important themes. The commercialisation of research, the raising of capital, and culture, the changing of culture, talents and skills- so bringing back some of the 20,000 Australians, for example, who live and work in Silicon Valley. We want Australians to travel overseas and improve their skills and contacts but we also want them to come back here and start their businesses and the Government is an exemplar. So the Government itself uses digital technology to deliver services but also how we use our procurement policy to encourage high tech industries and advanced manufacturing. So it’ll be very comprehensive and I think people will be very impressed and it’s going to be quite transformative I think for the Australian economy.

Patricia Karvelas: How will you bring them back from Silicon Valley, as you’ve just said you want to do? I mean that is the place that people like that want to be. You know your intention is create that kind of environment in Australia but before you make it, it’s not enticing is it, for somebody at the top of their game?

Christopher Pyne: Well you’d be surprised I think by how many incredible people there are in this sector in Australia doing amazing things whether they’re at Atlassian or Freelancer or two people I met, for example, today who are doing a start up in FinTech and they are doing it in Australia and in the United States and in Israel and London and Berlin I mean these people are very international.

When I say we want to bring them back, we want to make the environment and the ease of coming to Australia such that we attract the kinds of people who are going to help us transition to a new economy. We’re not starting off a low base; we have an amazing sector in the new economy. We could just do it better, we could commercialise our research better, we are the 6th country in the OECD for quality of research, we are the 33rd out of 33 for commercialising research. So there’s great things we can do but we are not coming off a low start, we’ve already got terrific people in the sector.

Patricia Karvelas: I’m hoping this question will particularly interest you as a former education minister…

Christopher Pyne: Try me.

Patricia Karvelas: I will. It was reported this week…

Patricia Karvelas: It was, wasn’t it, that’s what I try and go for. It was reported this week that the innovation statement will herald the end of the publish or perish culture within universities, the Government funding won’t depend so much on academics getting articles published in journals, can you explain what’s being considered in this space?

Christopher Pyne: Well obviously we have great research, we have won 15 Nobel Prizes in Australia which to put that in perspective, the People’s Republic of China has won two Nobel Prizes so we are a country that punches well above its weight in quality but we aren’t commercialising research. How many times have you heard people say such and such was created in Australia but it was commercialised in the United States or in the UK? We really want to create an environment where it’s easy for people to raise capital here. It’s easy to enable risk here in Australia so that people want to be involved in commercialising our research out of universities and institutes.

We really want to support CSIRO in terms of the incentives and research grants, we spend $9.7 billion on research- the taxpayer- every year, or this year in 2015/16 and there’s a good question about whether we are getting enough impact for that. So we want to support basic research, support applied research and do it in a way that encourages academics and universities to do what they can to get an impact out of as much of that research as possible.

Patricia Karvelas: I think you said- I think it was on Q&A- that you do expect this innovation statement will ultimately cost the Budget more, that it won’t be neutral. How much more?

Christopher Pyne: Patricia, I can’t give you a preview about that.

Patricia Karvelas: You can give me an idea of how many millions are we talking? Hundreds?

Christopher Pyne: I can’t do that. No, the Treasurer would be most disconcerted if I started giving people previews about that but the point I was trying to make on Q&A was that this is not a penny pinching exercise. The Prime Minister and the ERC and me as the Minister have not set out to find a way of making savings as part of the National Innovation and Science Agenda. Sure there’ll be changes to the way we spend money. I think that’s important because we need to spend it as well as we can but this is not an attempt to sneak some savings through under the guise of a national innovation and science Agenda. It will in a net sense cost the Government money and I think people should therefore be able to look at thinking that the Government is very genuine.

Patricia Karvelas: Do you think under Tony Abbott though that this area was short changed? It was, funding was slashed in this space, was that a mistake?

Christopher Pyne: Well I mean I don’t- that’s old politics, Patricia.

Patricia Karvelas: Oh come on, it happened Christopher Pyne, was it a mistake?

Christopher Pyne: The Abbott administration is no longer the administration and under Malcolm Turnbull, obviously, he is very energised and instinctively interested in the innovation and science and research space and I think that the correct level of interest from the Government will be brought to bear in this part of the economy.

Patricia Karvelas: Earlier this week you announced Bill Ferris, a venture capitalist, as the new chair of Innovation Australia.

Christopher Pyne: Yes.

Patricia Karvelas: What do you want to see him achieve in that role?

Christopher Pyne: Well both the appointment of Bill Ferris as the chairman of Innovation Australia and Alan Finkel as the new Chief Scientist have sent really important messages to the community. And the message is that business and universities and research and philanthropy can all go together. It’s not an either/or. So Bill is one of the very first venture capitalists in Australia. He started his first business called CHAMP Equities in 1970. He’s regarded by the sector as the father of venture capitalism in this country, and Alan Finkel, of course, is both an engineer, researcher, successful commercialiser of that research, and a philanthropist and a businessman. So what we’re trying to say to the public is we have an approach which is going to be very enthusiastic and optimistic about what we can achieve in Australia with a can-do attitude of people like Bill Ferris and Alan Finkel.

Patricia Karvelas: Just finally, Malcolm Turnbull says he has confidence at this stage in Mal Brough, after his home was raided in connection to the James Ashby and Peter Slipper case. That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it?

Christopher Pyne: Well I think saying that Mal Brough’s home has been raided is rather an exaggeration. From what I can understand, Mal has put out a statement, indicated that he sat down and had a chat with the AFP officers. I think raiding is rather a pejorative way to describe it.

Patricia Karvelas: But it is unusual for police to visit a minister’s home. You know that?

Christopher Pyne: Well, I mean a raid suggests people rifling through drawers and knocking over filing cabinets and it all coming in the dark of the night with a search warrant. That’s what that conveys. What actually happened is that Mal had a very cordial conversation with the AFP about this matter of Mr Slipper’s diary and he’s put out a statement about it.

Patricia Karvelas: Well I want to thank you for joining us on RN Drive. Come back.

Christopher Pyne: It’s a great pleasure. Always happy to be on your show.

Patricia Karvelas: And that’s Christopher Pyne, the Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science joining us on RN Drive.

[ends]