Check against delivery

I acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of this wonderful country on which we are meeting today. I’d like to thank Emma Johnston AO for your lovely welcome and introduction.

I also acknowledge the work of Cooperative Research Australia – particularly Chair Patricia Kelly and Chief Executive Jane O’Dwyer – and thank them for the invitation and the opportunity to speak today. 

I acknowledge Cathy Foley CSIRO board member and Industry Capability Network, and Luke Sheehy from Universities Australia. 

I would like to welcome Robyn Denholm and Professor Ian Chubb AC who are doing incredibly important work along with Fiona Wood and others on this strategic examination of research and development. 

My old friend professor Roy Green is also somewhere in the audience. It’s great to see Roy and so many of the rest of you who make a contribution each and every day for Australia, for research and for our shared objectives. 

My father was a senior research scientist in the NSW Department of Agriculture up until he retired.

I grew up around laboratories, watching clever and practical people – scientists like my dad, laboratory technicians, field workers and post graduate students – work together to identify and alter new cultivars and novel breeds. Agricultural techniques and science that lifted the productivity and sustainability of the Australian farm sector.

Their outreach program meant that the best science was in paddocks with farmers and industry in a two-way process that lifted farm productivity, supported Australian food security, improved drought resilience and our exports.

I did much of my HSC study in the Glen Innes Agricultural Research Station’s library, toiling away at a little desk amidst tall shelves bursting with research periodicals on pasture, sheep, beef and wheat. 

I am easily distracted, but I certainly wasn’t distracted by ag science journals. I reckon the old man knew me pretty well: the best chance of me doing some work was well away from town in a room full of research periodicals.

I didn’t follow my father into his chosen profession.

It’s best to know your strengths.

I was captured by modern history, by economics and by the great story of Labor Governments’ reforming and modernising in the interest of a fairer and stronger Australian society.

But respect for science was an absolute in the Ayres household.

I learned early in life that science and progress are natural partners.

Who would have thought that would become controversial.

So, it’s a profound honour to serve in this portfolio.

To play a modest part in taking Australian scientific endeavour forward as the new Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science.

It’s also a privilege to draw on the wealth of knowledge and expertise in this room.

I have deep respect and gratitude for the work you all do, and I look forward to building relationships and listening to your perspective on the challenges we face.

Friends—

This is not a time for complacency or hanging back. This is a consequential time for Australia and Australians – for effort, lifting together and building Australia’s future.

We are all grappling with the work of making our country stronger, more productive and more resilient.

Because we live in challenging times.

We’ve endured a global pandemic and a world-wide inflation shock.

Democracies are battling corrosive forces of division and polarisation.

Old economic orthodoxies are being re-written.

As the Prime Minister says regularly, our choice is stark.

We can shape the future, or watch the future shape us.

I’m delighted to be in a room full of future shapers.

Research leaders who want to make the world a better place.

Industry representatives prepared to invest in cutting-edge technology developed here in Australia by our best and brightest and transformed into capabilities and products that can be adopted by our firms and workers.

Applied research is fundamental to achieving Australia’s big, transformational, national interest goals.

In doing so, it adds value to discovery research, without which we would not have anything to commercialise.

This is how we use knowledge to strengthen Australia’s industrial capacity.

To boost economic growth and to spread wealth, jobs and opportunity to every corner of the country.

To contribute to reversing the downward trajectory of Australian productivity growth and using technology and science to lift our productive performance and participate more effectively in global markets and value chains.

Applied research is the bedrock of strategic capability.

That’s why we invest in it.

Cooperative Research Centres are a proud Labor legacy.

The Hawke and Keating Governments developed these programs in the 1990s, understanding that partnership and collaboration between researchers and entrepreneurs would deliver transformational outcomes for Australia and Australians.

Since this program began more than three decades ago, governments have invested almost $6 billion to establish 238 CRCs and 253 projects.

This funding has leveraged more than $17 billion in-cash and in-kind contributions from partners in businesses, government and the community sector.

Cooperative Research Australia has been supporting these efforts since 1994, building a vibrant community of successful innovators.

We appreciate the work you do and the contribution you make.

I’m new to Cabinet, and to the portfolio.

I’m still getting my feet under the desk.

Taking briefings.

Building my team.

I don’t imagine there will be many people in this room expecting me to lay out a complete policy vision today.

But some of you know that industry policy is my passion.

It’s my passion, because I believe in an active social democratic state that works for every Australian.

As I said, I grew up in regional Australia.

I spent years as a union official on shop floors, offices and boardrooms across country Australia, our industrial regions and outer suburbs.

Talking to workers, haggling with employers, nutting through the productivity and distributional challenges that animate every workplace in Australia.

I understand the dignity of work.

I understand the power of economic opportunity.

I want Australia to be a manufacturing powerhouse in an increasingly digital world—

To be the indispensable industrial, technological, energy and strategic partner to the region in which we live.

And to do that by deploying our strengths in energy and resources; 

leveraging our geography including our proximity to the fastest growing region in history; and backing our brilliant research institutions and our smart, skilled and resilient people.

You’ve likely gleaned I’m a sentimental bloke.

But I’m not driven by nostalgia.

I’m looking forward – to the enormous opportunity we can seize in this time of disruption and transformation.

Not in the rear-view mirror.

We have a lot of work to do in the months and years ahead, including how to lead and make the best use of AI and digital technologies.

I’m humbled by the opportunity the Prime Minister has given me with this portfolio.

Together with Dr Andrew Charlton, Assistant Minister for Science, Technology and the Digital Economy, I want to deliver world-class industry policy that is informed by evidence and driven by purpose, but isn’t shackled by dogma.

The task before us is very clear.

Australia must build its economic complexity and resilience, and do it with purpose and urgency.

When the Prime Minister first shared his vision of our Future Made in Australia policy in April 2024, he said we needed to be clear-eyed about the times we live in.

He said we needed sharper elbows when it came to marking out our national interest, and we needed to be willing to break with old orthodoxies.

The Prime Minister was not heralding a retreat into protectionism, or the rise of a hulking government crowding out private investment.

What he was signalling was a need to move past arid, think tank platitudes about the role of government and old binaries.

Government needs to work alongside the private sector to grow the economy, boost productivity and secure prosperity.

Combining market tools with government action to create opportunity for generations of Australians.

We’ve got to build state capacity, and private sector capacity, and not see those imperatives as in conflict with each other.

I think people in this room understand that imperative at a very deep level.

We can make Australia stronger by investing in what matters, and drawing on our shared values and strengths.

We also have a unique opportunity to join up our research and innovation system with our Future Made in Australia framework.

Given we have a productivity challenge, this is an opportunity we can’t miss.

My friend Professor Roy Green notes Australia has a trade and industrial structure heavily weighted to resource exports rather than the knowledge-based industries of the future.

He says our comparative advantage in unprocessed raw minerals has reinforced our narrow trade and industrial structure.

The theory of comparative advantage is simple.

Countries will maximise their economic potential by specialising in goods and services which they are relatively more efficient at producing – exporting these products, while importing those in which other countries have their own comparative advantage.

But this can make us vulnerable to external shocks.

And have the effect of narrowing our horizon.

Roy noted recently comparative advantage was a brake on Australia seeking out strategic opportunity.

We need to be seeking competitive advantage in high productivity, high skill jobs and industries of the future, including advanced manufacturing.

We need to be harnessing technological advancement and innovation, like artificial intelligence.

I understand many people in this room would see a path to economic resilience and diversification in lifting public investment in research and development.

That’s a conversation we need to have.

But it’s not a magic bullet either. All of us, public and private, State and Commonwealth, research institutions and civil society, the physical sciences and the social sciences must lift together and pull our weight.

Working together, to build the capacity of Australia to meet the historical moment and build a secure, sustainable future for Australia and Australians. 

Our Future Made in Australia plan is about maximising the economic and industrial benefits of the global move to net zero emissions, and attracting substantial international investment to do so.

The policy architecture is about securing Australia’s place in this evolving global economic and strategic landscape, where the market for clean energy technologies alone is estimated at $15 trillion by 2050.

I want to thank my predecessor, Ed Husic, and my Cabinet colleagues, for setting these important policy structures in place during our first term in office. Much has been achieved. The foundations for our work together.

My task, in this coming term, will be about coordination, delivery and impact.

To join up our research and innovation system with our Future Made in Australia framework.

I want to focus on coordination of national resources and programs, and deepen the cooperation between industry and our great research institutions.

Universities, the CSIRO, and the CRC’s here today.

Including the role these can play in building innovation ecosystems around the country.

I look forward to receiving the recommendations of our strategic review of existing R&D frameworks when that is completed later this year.

In the meantime, I will be meeting stakeholders and consulting to help inform my own views about how we maximise the various investments.

I want to be clear.

This is opportunity we need to build together.

Government can set the frameworks, but this is a nation building project in the truest sense.

The best and brightest minds, focused on the task.

Let’s get this done.

I mentioned at the start my father is a scientist.

A research agronomist.

His field is plant genetics and plant breeding. 

His life’s work was deploying the world’s best science and his own research to lift output for Australian farmers in the context of our tough climate and rising competitive pressures.

This search for resilience, the desire to grow and prosper together on our ancient continent is the Australian story.

The Prime Minister spoke recently about progressive patriotism.

Doing things the Australian way.

Coming together in a time of conflict, division and competition. Not importing bad ideas from overseas or pulling apart.

Knowing and being prepared to invest in what we value.

This is the job of building Australia’s future.

Of strengthening our foundations and fundamentals.

Delivering a world-class industry policy isn’t an abstraction.

It is at the heart of the Albanese Government’s plan for long-term growth and jobs, for security in its broadest sense, for lifting our productive performance and making sure that every Australian is part of our national project and shares in its success.

Let’s get cracking!