Science & Technology Australia Media Release
The Australian economy would be $100 billion bigger and boosted by 42,000 new jobs by hitting a target of investing 3% of GDP in research and development, new analysis by the nation’s peak body for science and technology has found.
Speaking at the National Press Club today, Science & Technology Australia President Professor Sharath Sriram will make a powerful case for rapidly reaching the 3% target to turn Australia into an innovation nation, reveal how to create an innovation ecosystem that will secure the country’s economic future, and warn of the consequences of failing to do so.
Professor Sriram is a research rockstar and a commercialisation champion based at RMIT. His work connecting industry and researchers has created more than $9 million in commercial partnerships for his university, and spurred innovations including smart bedding products for aged-care support, a wearable device for continuous molecular monitoring, and miniature biosensors for monitoring respiratory illnesses.
He will deliver the address as the centrepiece of STA’s Science Meets Parliament (SMP). Now into its 24th year, SMP brings hundreds of scientists and technologists from all around Australia to Canberra for two days of professional development focused on navigating the policy architecture and getting their science into the hands of decision makers.
Australia’s spending on research and development as a percentage of GDP has been in decline for more than a decade. We now spend less than 2 cents in every dollar on economy-boosting R&D. The US spends more than double Australia’s investment, and South Korea almost triple.
“If we were investing that 3 per cent of GDP in R&D right now, the economy would be $100 billion and 42,000 jobs better off. And this is a conservative estimate,” said Professor Sriram.
“To maintain our standard of living, Australia must increase R&D expenditure to 3 per cent of GDP as fast as we can.”
Key to the success of that plan will be a connected innovation ecosystem that smoothly takes great Australian ideas, turns them into products and services, and draws maximum value for society.
“The three parts of our innovation ecosystem need to work in cohesion – universities and research institutes generating ideas, businesses transforming and adopting them, with government championing the efforts with strategic incentives and driving efficiencies.”
“Creating this ecosystem is crucial. Failing to build it will have big consequences.”
“If we fail to diversify, if we don’t become an innovation-driven economy, then we will be a nation of consumers rather than creators. We will end up paying an ever-increasing rent to the rest of the world.”
“Unless we become a smarter country, we’re doomed to become a poorer one.”
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About Science & Technology Australia
Science & Technology Australia is the nation’s peak body representing more than 225,000 scientists and technologists. We’re the leading policy voice on science and technology. Our flagship programs include Science Meets Parliament, Superstars of STEM, and STA STEM Ambassadors.
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Whilst globalization came into being via inevitability, the accompanying quest for sustainability was buried by the economics of the day.
Pretty soon the whole caboodle was infected by the politics of dominion, and in that no amount of capital was spared, in fact, that capital was created out of nowhere but the wormhole of debt to a separate reality.
The resultant onrush created an addiction, and with it a rise of stupidity, opportunism and greed. It then developed into a militarized dominion-seeking wreckage of resource depletion and production of bling. A feckless class struggle for power despite the wreckage.
As states sold off their assets to privateers in a bid to stay in the race, various hegemons developed, and with them the insidious press of ‘suicide capitalism’. Meanwhile the acquisitive privateers, invented nothing but abstractions such as hedges, derivatives and financial jiggery-pokery to further their obssession. Financial and economic warfare became de rigeur, backed of course by wasteful military hardware and big-chesting, all whilst the tangible world perished.
Inevitably, in the face of such recklessness, the matter of sustainability has raised to the point of desperation, and in response the over-geared masters of power and dominion are fighting back globally through the guile of misinformation and disinformation, principally via politics.
Of course, no-one, let alone educators, scientists and academics are immune. Via that very human condition of corruptibility, of being vulnerable to the black-balling by the powerful dominion-seekers.
But, as background, I rabbit on. Suffice to say that the scientific community of individuals and associations needs to have a transparent mandated framework of ethics premised on sustainability, peace and well-being in place before pursuing government or commercially sponsored R&D. And the nature and purpose of that R&D needs to be transparent.
Having now watched NPC Professor Sharath Sriram’s impressive presentation, aside from the compelling case for investment in R&D, but also to stop the dwindling level of investment and the Oz plummet in the world league tables to 93rd, despite being recognised as producing 1st rate research.
it is apparent that there exists significant blockages in the old and worn frameworks to facilitate investment in Oz R&D. And the good Professor would have it that those blockages do not encourage or facilitate a streamlined, integrated process for participants; researchers, producers and investors (incl govt). Blockages, such as disparate requirements for application and granting of tax incentives, and 13 different sets of requirements and different sets of terminologies from 13 different portfolio areas when applying for government grants.
It is no small irony, that in all of this, the Department of Industry, Science and Resources and DFAT, via Ed Husic and Penny Wong have been touting the $40m Global Science and Technology Diplomacy Fund and the opening of its first round of grants (focused on our asia-pacific neighbors). Seems a tad like slaking a political agenda, and perhaps putting the cart before the horse in the broader R&D landscape, although it could also be seen as a strategic loss-leader in a bid to stimulate R&D.
Nevertheless, back to R&D generally, it seems that the nuts and bolts of it come down to IP, its proceeds and prestige. A mooted return on investment of 3.5 to 5 times – spectacular in anybody’s terms. A cynic posed that we couldn’t possibly be globally competitive because our labour costs are so high. The Professor’s response; we can license the IP offshore maintaining agreed proceeds, whilst producing all its products onshore to meet domestic demand.
Needless to say, the realm of IP is a contractual, legal, jursidictional, enforcement, compensatory nightmare. For example, in transnational agreements, investor state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions that allow investor states to sue governments for loss due to change of law. Suffice it to say that such matters are the principal ground of hostility and modern espionage and warfare.
Its all very well to talk of prestige, but that doesn’t rank high in politics today, its much more the maintenance of economic power whilst serving the socio-cultural aspirations of the electorate.
So much to consider, so far to go, and so much to do.
wont happen anytime soon. anyone remember solar cells or even batteries. We did do the research but didnt fund anything beyond that. Some dipstick bureaucrat probably thought, nah, not on our policy agenda.
It can be done as China shows, but we cant even get Fuck Dutton to say yes to anything.
One hopes for the best but expects the very worst.
af56, of course the thing about China is that it has a one-party government, so they’re not riven by political dissension; if they make a decision to do something they commit, and it gets done. Along with that, they’re acutely aware that the hegemon will do whatever it takes to stymie their activities and that just intensifies their commitment to development in whatever guise, economic, social, military, infrastructural etc. They also happen to have the planet’s largest pool of STEM graduates actively working in the fields of science & engineering.
One could learn a lot about how to do things by closely studying that country.
canguro, thats my point exactly.
But to the article I say, yes your absolutely right we need to commit to R&D. Historically, countries that have invested in themselves have done exceedingly well till they stop. Lets not be pedantic about how they invest, the USA for instance probably puts more than 20% into military spend and hence has the biggest tech support.
Australia has typically spent all its capital on mining to the detriment of everything else. I dont see a change anytime soon.
We did miss a bullet on the gas lead recovery though. Hydrogen to ammonia is still a possibility but probably $5-10b proposition. We as a nation wont spend that……..and then miss out again.
IMO, and in case anyone hadn’t noticed, there’s a massive pivot underway in just what business, and how Oz makes its way in the world. The conjunction of the urgency of climate change abatement scenario, the immanent economic / resource failure of the ff industry, the critical collapse of fresh water availability (and desertification), the urgent need for detoxification, and the hurtling advance of electronic / digital high-tech has mandated rapid response.
Oz has in the past certainly been a laggard, arrogantly and complacently relying on mining, and the ‘sheep’s back’ (and latterly bovine). And as an adjunct, the devious wiles of the thieving land barons, whilst also crushing our post-war manufacturing base. None of which, in the face of pathetic PRRT and MRRT, are sufficient to support the development of the requisite jobs, infrastructure and advancement of the economy to meet the press of population growth and the ‘new world’.
The entire world has been increasingly gripped by this for at least 20 years, with the (politically broken) ‘west’ becoming increasingly hamstrung by ignorant, arrogant, populist, olde worlde thinking, traditions and attachments. This is most evident in mindless, manipulated, worn-out old imperium of the UK, the broken and bleeding hegemon of the USA, and all those attached and dependent. A perilous situation, because much of the world is dependent upon the US hegemon.
Needless to say, apprehensive about the rise of balanced equity, the once-empowered fat-headed old exploiters and extractors, circle like buzzards, paying for the feckless political jackals and death-cult evangelists to bring down the herds upon which they gorge.
After 10 years of a self-gorging and otherwise moribund government, and now, at the precipice, when Oz has to awaken from its complacency, and the new government seeks to bring about the pivot, it is blasted by post-pandemic liquidity issues, the criminal opportunism of Putin and Netanyahu, supply-chain issues, inflation and evil rhetorical squawks from the old buzzards and their flunkies.
These headwinds are not insignificant, putting pressure on the democratic project, and sowing anxiety and doubt in much of the voting public. At a time when we need to demonstrate resilience, confidence and determination to make the pivot and attract the requisite investment, we are assailed by real distractions, and the feckless sensation-generating disruptors in the mainstream media.
Indeed there are many lessons to be learned, including from Europe, the UK and USA, and China. They need to be heeded and acted upon quickly, without fixating on the lassitude of the past, and the ‘not any time soon’ resignation – as that’s what the squawking buzzards want, so they can wring us dry.
Very dubious.
In the past when something worthwhile has been developed, don’t the CIA move in steal the info and give it to some off shore corporation?
Nice article and some good ideas, but it seems motivation to adapt to these changes is in the selling, as good a spruiker as we have none can motivate the masses, we are stuck with a moribund society focused upon self gratification, should be interesting to watch how these folk adapt to dwindling supply chains and little fuel, though adaptation would need to be pretty rapid just to survive, we all want a Utopia but by sweat off someone else’s brow.