Journalist: Good morning Karen.

Karen Andrews: Good morning Glenn, how are you?

Journalist: I’m going well, how did you enjoy Geraldton and the mid-west yesterday?

Karen Andrews: Well I certainly enjoyed my time in Geraldton, I’ve really only passed through on my way from Perth through to Broome previously so it was an opportunity to see a lot more of the region and I thoroughly enjoyed my time there.

Journalist: What was the reason for your visit?

Karen Andrews: Primarily it was to have a look at the SKA and the initial stages of that so we had a look at ASKAP out at Murchison and also the MWA project so that was the main part of it, but when we returned to Geraldton the focus there was certainly a science community forum.

This is the first one that’s actually been held in Australia and it was an opportunity for us to demonstrate two things.

Firstly that science is important to this government, it’s at the forefront of our industry policy and secondly, it was an opportunity for us to speak to the people of Geraldton and the community to find out what was important to them particularly with science.

Journalist: So does it appear that educators in and around the mid-west seem to be taking this on board?

Karen Andrews: Oh absolutely, I was delighted with the attendance at the forum yesterday from a wide range of people.

We had the local Mayor Ian Carpenter, the State Member for Geraldton was there, Ian Blayney, we had a number of teachers, we had members of the community that came in and gave their views on particularly STEM so, Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths and the jobs of the future.

Journalist: And you also had some guest speakers, well known around the world for the work they do?

Karen Andrews: Absolutely, we actually had three guest speakers, we had Peter Klinken, the Western Australian Chief Scientist, he actually talked about the WA science strategy.

We had Dr Lewis Ball from CSIRO he’s the Director of Astronomy and Space Science and we also had Professor Carole Jackson who is with the Curtin University. She’s the WA Premier’s Fellow at Curtin University talking about the MWA.

So it was a fantastic introduction. Just imagine having those three people alone in a room talking about the great work that they’re doing.

Journalist: I would have imagined they would have enthused the audience and got people excited about what is ahead?

Karen Andrews: Look, they certainly did and I probably felt a little bit spoilt myself that I had the opportunity to spend a day and a half with them out at Murchison.

But yesterday at the science forum I really thought that they were terrific, and they gave a good overview of the work that they’re doing and the need to make sure that we have a future generation of science people.

Journalist: And Karen what will you do now with the information you’ve gathered at forums such as this. I know you’ve had a similar type of forum in Perth in previous times, what will you do with that information now, where does it go to from here?

Karen Andrews: Well we have been doing two things, I’ve actually got a forum today with Australia’s Chief Scientist Professor Ian Chubb in Perth and we will actually be talking to primarily researchers, university staff about the Government’s response to the Chief Scientist's STEM paper.

So those are happening in the capital cities around Australia at the moment and feedback is available until the 31^st of July this year.

So anyone who is keen to have a look at that report and provide some feedback should go to science.gov.au but at the same time I’m also running the local science community forums, of which the one in Geraldton was the first nationally.

But these will be our opportunity to go out into the community and get a wide range of feedback that we will use to inform future science policy, but also look at the next steps in STEM because we know that there is a problem, that we need more people with STEM skills here, now we need to set out a strategy to achieve that.

Journalist: What do you say to those people that are critical of your Government and say that you don’t put science at a higher enough priority and you reduce funding in recent times?

Karen Andrews: I would say come along to one of the science forums and I think that will change your view about how seriously this Government takes science.

But there’s two parts to the funding issue one is the funding that Governments should be making towards science research and often that is the blue sky research, but there’s also a lot of research that could and should be funded by the private sector as well.

So not all science funding research is the responsibility of the Government and I think it’s time for your larger organisations to step up and start putting some money into research in Australia.

Journalist: And Karen do you believe Australia can go forward and be very competitive in a business sense through science and innovation?

Karen Andrews: Yes I do. But we do have a long way to go with the commercialisation of a lot of our research, we’re not particularly good at that and perhaps what we need to do is look at some of the training we are providing our scientists.

They’re great researchers but they’re not necessarily focused in an entrepreneurship sense. So we have to talk to our scientists and get them focusing on the next stage of their research which is how to commercialise it.

We’ve also got to engage with the business community as well and make sure they understand what research is being done here and how they can apply that research to their own businesses.

Journalist: Look Karen we appreciate your time and your overview this morning, thank you for being with us this morning and enjoy the rest of your time in Western Australia.

Karen Andrews: I certainly will and it’s been a pleasure speaking with you Glenn.

[ENDS]