Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane and Education Minister Christopher Pyne have released the strategy Boosting the Commercial Returns from Research.
In announcing the strategy, the ministers highlighted the high productivity of Australia's research sector, improving its global share of the top 1 per cent of highly cited publications by 75% between 2005 and 2013.
Yet they also acknowledged that, when it comes to collaboration between business and researchers, Australia’s performance falls away.
Minister Pyne said that the Government was determined to address the challenges Australia faces in turning good ideas and research breakthroughs into commercial results.
“Despite our strong history in research, Australia ranks last in the OECD on the proportion of businesses which collaborate with research institutions on innovation. Similarly, in 2011, Australia ranked second last of 17 OECD countries on new-to-the-world innovation,” he said.
“For Australia to prosper, we must improve our ability to translate publicly funded research into commercial outcomes. The strategy we announce today includes 14 important actions to support economic growth and to ensure Australia’s competitiveness into the future.”
The actions include identifying further opportunities to enhance collaboration between publicly funded research agencies and industry, and the creation of the $20 billion Medical Research Future Fund.
Labor mocked the announcement, saying that the Government had only managed to produce is a list of further reviews, actions that are already underway, and "meaningless motherhood statements."
Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane said Australia’s future competitiveness depends on collaboration between business and researchers to turn Australia’s strong track record of generating world-class ideas into practical outcomes that benefit our economy and our community and enhance our standard of living.
“The need for reform is clear,” Mr Macfarlane said. “Our universities, science agencies and businesses are critical to capitalising on new economic opportunities and for building our industries and jobs of the future, but they must collaborate more effectively so we can get the most value from our research spending.”
Boosting the Commercial Returns from Research is an initiative under the Government’s Industry Innovation and Competitiveness Agenda released by the Prime Minister in October 2014.
Actions under the strategy can be viewed at the Department of Industry website.