RN Drive

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
Radio National Drive with Patricia Karvelas
Monday 30 November 2015

SUBJECT: National Innovation and Science Agenda

PATRICIA KARVELAS: And it’s the start of the final week of Federal Parliament for 2015. RN Drive is coming to you live from Parliament House in Canberra and joining me in the studio is Christopher Pyne, the Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, it’s nice to see you in person.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Patricia, it’s good to be with you again.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Now, you know I like getting to the politics first, I’m not gong to hold back, Peter Hartcher has written today that Scott Morrison was lined up to be Malcolm Turnbull’s treasurer in February. The Treasurer’s played it down quoting Taylor Swift as you do when you’re in a bit of trouble but doesn’t he need to answer these questions head on? Even that he was in a meeting to discuss that, isn’t that inappropriate?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, lots of discussions occur in government and in opposition in Australian politics, whether it’s state or federal or even local government and lots of conversations happen over a long period of time but this is all very old news Patricia and it’s old politics, quite frankly. I think the Australian public are more interested in our plan for jobs and growth.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Perhaps they are but still, if the Treasurer was planning or at least participating in plans to try and get rid of the old prime minister that many months ago, that doesn’t speak very well of unity does it?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, I think he’s made it perfectly clear that these stories should be discounted by a pretty large spoonful of salt and he’s moved on- I think we’ve all moved on, I think the Australian public have moved on as well.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: But not everyone has moved on because all the Conservatives on the back bench keep coming out with different policy positions and making it quite clear that they’re not necessarily happy with the new zeitgeist.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, I think they’re coming up with opinions and, you know, we’re not a Stalinist organization, unlike the Labor Party. We believe in having different views and if people want to express them in public, as long as they support the party’s positions in the end, which they invariably do, then a bit of debate doesn’t do anybody any harm. It shows a maturity.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: So, I understand The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, through Peter Hartcher’s work will run another four parts of this series, you nervous about that?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Terrific. I think everyone’s looking forward to that.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Are you excited? Do you like- do you get up- well, I think they publish them at night, digital first, do you get really excited and read them all?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No, I don’t. I’m not a political junkie for things like the Fairfax Press’ exposes on old news. You see, this is a bit late. It’s, what, almost three months since the leadership change and it seems a bit late to be raking over these old coals. I’m getting on with my job, doing the National Innovation and Science Agenda.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Okay. But I’ll put this to you, because I do want to talk about that agenda. I’m interested in that agenda. You enjoyed the raking over the Labor coals, didn’t you, you loved that?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, Labor executed two prime ministers in a very short space of time and ran a very dysfunctional government. This government has been getting runs on the board and we are creating jobs and growth and Malcolm Turnbull is doing the same thing that Tony Abbott was doing which is to continue with our focus on the economy while Labor is mired in trying to outflank the Greens on carbon emissions.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: The Prime Minister is in Paris for the UN climate talks but he says Paris is not the end of the journey. Are you worried that he’ll spook the Conservative wing of the Liberal Party and the Nationals with the prospect of bigger emissions targets down the track?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No. He’s made it very clear we have a target of 26 to 28 per cent by 2030 which is comparable to most of the countries in our band of industrialized countries. We’ve already reached- well, we will reach our target and exceed it of five per cent by 2020. We are a good international citizen when it comes to carbon emissions and one of the vignettes that hasn’t been aired much is that by 2030, we’ll have actually reduced our carbon emissions per capita more than any other country in the world.

So, we are actually high achievers. We actually emit a very small percentage of the world’s emissions but per capita they’re very high but because of the good work that Greg Hunt and Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott have been doing, we will- through Direct Action, have the biggest cuts to carbon emissions of any country by 2030 on a per capita basis.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: The Prime Minister has also said that solutions to climate change lie in innovation. Now, that’s- you’re Innovation Minister. So, what specifically are you doing to combat climate change through innovation policy, how much are we going to see of that in that statement next week?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, there’s a large appetite in the economy for research, development, technologies that reduce our carbon footprint, the package that I will release next week will encourage the ecosystem in innovation that will give business even more reason- and government and universities even more reason to invest in technologies that people are searching for the economy. When there’s such a large investment these days in things like wind and solar and hydro, subsidies from state governments, local governments and the Commonwealth Government, that it makes good business sense to be involved in that part of the economy.

Now, some of the things that we have in our tax system or our corporate law system have been mitigating against that kind of risk taking and we’re going to enable that risk and allow the commercialization of research on a greater scale.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: We’re expecting that statement – I think it’s on a Monday, am I right?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It’s next week.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Okay, alright, next week. I’ve heard Monday, but we’ll see if I’m right. You’ve already got Labor threatening to take away its support and industry figures complaining about you’re crowd-funding changes to be introduced this week. They say the changes are so limited they’ll actually hinder start-ups. Why are your changes so limited and are you going to reconsider that, given we’ve got Labor saying that they’ll walk away and industry saying it’s not good enough?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, I think Ed Hughes is just trying to get attention in the media for his position. But the crowd-sourced equity funding proposals of Kelly O’Dwyer, the Minister for Small Business, are quite generous on an international standard basis. Our – for example, our threshold of how much money you can raise through a crowd-sourced equity funding mechanism is five million, which is higher than most other countries in the world. But we also have a different structure in terms of public and private companies to New Zealand, and people simply say, well, you should just transfer what New Zealand does. Well, that doesn’t actually work because we have a different corporate structure.

We also have to remember consumers. It’s all very well for people in this space to say let the market rip and let’s have open slather. But if mums and dads loose their hard-earned savings, they will ask the Government how could you have allowed this to happen? So we want to put in place the protections for consumers, which sometimes those involved in raising capital this way don’t like. But I can tell you what, when mums and dads – if those businesses end up failing – they will ask us what we’re doing about it.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: So to be clear, there’s no way you’ll re-look at that policy, given there’s quite intense pressure on you from industry to re-look at it?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, lots of parts of industry are very happy with the Government’s proposals. There are some parts who have been quoted in The Financial Review today saying we should go even further. But there are many parts of the sector that are very pleased with the changes that we’ve already announced. But if Kelly O’Dwyer wants to revisit that subject, well, she will make that kind of announcement herself in the fullness of time.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: On RN Drive, my guest is Christopher Pyne. He’s the Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science. Our number here: 04 18 226 576 or our Twitter handle is @rndrive if you want to tweet us instead.

You’ve said the PM wants you to release your inner revolutionary, which really conjures up so many images for me, particularly looking at you right now, and not to worry about money. When it comes to innovation reforms, how much money are you not worrying about exactly?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: [Laughs] Well, the Prime Minister wants to make sure that the National Innovation and Science Agenda is a game-changer in this part of the economy. He doesn’t want to be constrained by, perhaps, old thinking. But as a conservative who hasn’t had an inner revolutionary release for some time …

PATRICIA KARVELAS: How’s that working out?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: … I’m very pleased to be given the chance to support very exciting ideas. And I think next week, when it’s released, people will find the National Innovation and Science Agenda very comprehensive – it covers commercializing research, raising capital, changing the culture, talents and skills in areas like STEM and visas, as well as the Government’s own behavior as an exemplar in this area, and it covers about 25 to 30 different measures. So…

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Do you really think we could become a Silicon Valley or an Israel?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: … I don’t think there’s any doubt about it. I think Singapore, Hong Kong, Berlin, London, Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv – these are the examples for Australia. But we are a very highly-skilled workforce; we have a very high quality education system, particularly our higher education system. We just need to give business the support to enable risk and to commercialize research. We have the- amongst the highest quality research in the OECD but we’re last in the OECD for commercializing that r