Journalist:  What was the purpose of the community science forum here today and did you think it achieved its goal?

Keith Pitt: Well today is about promoting science, technology, engineering and maths, we’ve had people from high school students all the way through to local, innovative businesses. There were some great presentations, really good to see the depth of the industry we have right here in Bundaberg working in the Hinkler electorate.

Karen Andrews: There were a couple of things that came out of today and its primary purpose was certainly to promote science, technology, engineering and maths to the students that were here at the forum but we also wanted to showcase some local businesses and demonstrate the great work that is being done in Bundaberg and surrounding areas and make sure that for rest of Australia we can identify that there is great, innovative work being done in existing businesses. So innovation is not just about the next start up, which is certainly a significant part of innovation, but it is also key to our existing businesses and we heard some great stories today.

Journalist: There are a lot of great projects that incorporate science and technology and agriculture. What do you think the challenges are here in the Wide Bay-Burnett and what’s being done to tackle them?

Keith Pitt: Well we’ve heard from some really innovative local farmers.  Craig Van Rooyen, one of our local growers here, grows lychees and a number of other orchard crops. He's actually using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to try and get rid of birds, flying foxes and all those sorts of pests that damage his crop. On the numbers put forward today, it has been very successful.  Using UAVs has reduced losses from around 30 per cent to around 5 per cent.  That is just an incredible turn around.

Karen Andrews: That was certainly a leading success story out of today, and what we need to do with both Keith Pitt as the local member and myself, is to make sure these stories are well promoted throughout Australia. So that other primary producers can use similar technologies and modify it to their own businesses.

Journalist: Now what do you think the challenges are for a start up?  You may have an idea, but it's hard to access markets and funds, how do you combat that?

Keith Pitt: We'll certainly a number of our speakers today spoke about crowd funding, and I know the ABC has been very big on this the last couple of weeks and the opportunities they've had to source money for the very large projects. There's certainly interest from overseas superannuation funds, and locally, through the Federal Department of Industry, there are a number of funds, including the Entrepreneurs' Programme and the Industry Skills Fund.  They’re about trying to help businesses to build, to use their R&D effectively, to employ more people.

Karen Andrews: If you've got a great idea, the first thing you need to do is go online, to business.gov.au, and look at what government programmes are there to assist you to get started. As Keith Pitt has rightly said, the issues of access to capital are certainly important, there are government funds that are available. But we are looking at strengthening crowd source equity funding as well, as we understand that is certainly needed for start-ups here in Australia.

Journalist: Is there anything else you'd like to add that we might not have covered?

Keith Pitt: No but we're very thankful that the Assistant Minister’s plane did get here, it was a bit late, but all the participants were very understanding. But also thanks to CQ University as well, it was great for them to put the forum on here, and great to have a number of their students, and high school students to see what opportunities are here right here in this region.

Karen Andrews: Today was also a demonstration of the valuable connections that can be made between researchers at university and industry. But it needs to be a two way street, we need our researchers to go into industry, and we need to make sure our businesses are connecting to their local universities and their researchers. Because together they will be contributing to and developing the 21^st century economy.

Journalist:  Brilliant, nice to know your thoughts.

ENDS