Panelists at Cooperative Research Australia National Innovation Policy Forum (NIPF) Sydney breakfast L to R: Moderator: Clare Tubolets, Board Member and CEO of SmartCrete CRC; Hervé Harvard, Executive Director, Engineering & IT Solutions, UTS Rapido, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney; Susan Petrellis, Founder and Director, Bounce Partners; and Dr Jehan Kanga.

Rux Energy Founder & CEO Dr Jehan Kanga participated in the Cooperative Research Australia National Innovation Policy Forum (NIPF) Sydney breakfast roundtable sponsored by the Australian Government Department of Industry, Science and Resources. This was the second of such interstate roundtables, bringing together over 70 leaders in innovation, academia and industry.

Speakers Emeritus Professor Roy Green AM, Clare Tubolets, Hervé Harvard, Susan Petrellis, and Dr Jehan Kanga fired up the panel, getting down to brass tacks on policy ideas for the Australian government to lift Australia’s innovation performance. 

It was a timely discussion as Cooperative Research Australia participates in the Strategic Examination of R&D and prepares for the coming national election, and a treat to be amongst some of Sydney’s finest minds and innovators.

The themes that emerged were common with the themes that emerged at the Canberra forum – those being, the need for a coordinated national systems approach, the right incentives in the system, and enhancing workforce skills. The National Innovation Policy Forum will be publishing the outcomes from the table discussions shortly.

The event generated robust discussions on how to build Australia’s future business model. Some key points from the panel discussion, noted by the NIPF after the event included:

• R&D creates high value jobs. For every $1 million invested in R&D, we generate an average of $6 million in wage increases or new jobs.
• Australia needs to find our North Star, and back it with a coordinated system, investment, and clear purpose.
• The Commonwealth Government and universities need to understand what industry needsWe need greater STEM skilled  experienced representation in Australian industry and businesses in their Boards and executive leadership, as a lack of understanding of technology, how it develops and how it can be deployed is a strategic risk to productivity and competitiveness
• The Commonwealth needs to invest in bridging the gap between universities and business with new policies to support strengthening of IP security for technology companies within collaborative R&D projects.
• Experience and workforce capability underpins Australian innovation and future manufacturing productivity and competitiveness – Australia needs incentives to support bringing senior talent and experienced Australia technologists and manufacturers back home.

Dr Kanga also noted that the Australian State and Federal grants schemes, while helpful for the companies lucky enough to receive them, should be expanded significantly as there is a major funding gap – which they referred to as unfunded excellence. They continued that there is a market failure in Australia in technology development and advanced manufacturing with an extreme paucity of available private investment capital available for deep tech, and for manufacturing. This creates a strategic risk for Australia, with successful Australian deep tech companies typically getting poached by overseas investors, and both technology and manufacturing capability offshored. This phenomenon further drives down manufacturing capability. Dr Kanga noted the importance of the new NSW Industry Policy: A forward-looking agenda for a resilient and productive NSW economy which incorporates the $275M Net Zero Manufacturing Initiative among many other schemes which provide targeted funding to solve major energy policy challenges and support manufacturing resilience and capability development. 

Dr Kanga also noted that reform and expansion of the Australian State and Federal grants programs should also move in lock step with reform of the R&D Tax Incentive, the foundation indirect funding scheme for all technology development in Australia across every sector. This scheme, once the envy of the world, has been whittled away over successive decades and needs renewed boosting to enable increased competitiveness versus technology leading nations such as Switzerland, Sweden, USA, Singapore and the UK which all rank far ahead of Australia in the Global Innovation Index.