Thank you, Anne-Maria.

I would like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we meet today, the Ngunnawal People, and pay my respects to Elders past and present. I extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People here today.

Before I make a few acknowledgements, I too want to acknowledge the 2025 Fellows [of the Australian Academy of Science]. It is a remarkable achievement, joining an organisation that really says so much about the elite of Australian science.

It is a profound achievement.

I say this as the husband of a wife who was appointed to the Academy of Social Sciences last year – I just know what that lifelong effort, from your first days as undergraduates to your early-career research, to all of the work that that involves. The leadership in your areas of science, but also, critically, in your institutions, and internationally. I know what that effort means, and what the Fellowship signifies. I wanted to note that.

I want to acknowledge Aunty Selina Walker, whose typically enthusiastic welcome to country was wonderful.

Professor Chennupati Jagadish AC – I’ll have more to say about your contribution in a moment.

Professor Tony Haymet, our Chief Scientist.

Professor Tanya Monro, the Chief Defence Scientist.

Vice-Chancellors.

There are MPs and Senators in attendance – I did want to single out my friend Mark Dreyfus, formerly our first law officer, Attorney-General. Mark, it’s very good to see you here this evening.  

The Secretary of my Department, Meghan Quinn, it’s very good to see you here. And I’m told there’s a few other secretaries of departments here as well this evening.

Also Professor Tom Calma, it’s very good to see you here. I’ve been having great conversations with the Chief Scientist, about some of the work that you’ve been talking about together.

Ambassador Gabriele Visentin, too, from our friends at the European Union – it’s very good to see you here this evening.  

May I take this opportunity to congratulate the recipients of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Scientist Award from earlier today – Dr Mitchell Gibbs and Associate

Professor Shannon Kilmartin-Lynch. That’s a hell of an achievement.

I’m really pleased that a Prime Minister’s Prize for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Knowledge Systems will be awarded for the first time this year.

Knowledge sharing between members of this Academy and First Nations communities really matters for Australia – not least for community-led responses to public health challenges and the management of country, water and natural resources. But also what it says about modern Australia and our approach to all these questions.

I’m famously not a scientist myself – I’m an Arts and Industrial Relations graduate of the University of Sydney.

But I bring to this role a deep personal regard for science and its contribution to Australian economic development.

For you, at the peak of the scientific system, but also for the whole system of science and research and development itself.

As Professor Jagadish said, perhaps this week of all weeks it’s important to acknowledge that half of the Fellows are born overseas. I was at an event on Monday, for Engineers Australia. Sixty per cent of Australian engineers are born overseas.

Some trained overseas, others here. Many are from the subcontinent.

Just affirming the value of that for Australia, in this week of all weeks, after the sordid events of the weekend – this government backs you in 100%.

I want to acknowledge the early career researchers, too. It’s a hard slog. And it should be a hard slog. It’s hard work. That’s the way academic work and research work happens. But I do want to acknowledge that struggle and that effort and that expertise, that genius that sits right through the system.  

For many years, my dad was a principal research scientist for the Department of Agriculture in New South Wales – it’s fashionable now to call it the Department of Primary Industries.

He and his colleagues studied things like white clover genetics, plant genetics more broadly, which they bred to adapt to the conditions of dryland pastures in Australia and the wider world.

I spent half of my life hanging around research laboratories, and I did all of my study for the Higher School Certificate in the Glen Innes Department of Agriculture research library, where there was no prospect of distraction or divergence. The dryland agriculture manual was the only thing really lying around.

But I could see the value of the research that improves soil quality and livestock nutrition – driving growth, productivity and sustainability in the Australian farm sector.

The example that my dad and his peers set – an example where research is mission-led and collaborative, contributing to real uplift in the lives of Australians – is one that remains front of mind as I work on behalf of the Albanese Labor Government to deliver what is a very significant reform agenda in industrial policy and in science and technology policy.

The scale of the investment – for example our $22.7 billion Future Made in Australia program – is a reliable guide to the scale of this government’s ambitions for Australia’s future.

Making Australia more independent in our industrial capabilities.

More resilient in response to geostrategic competition.

More ambitious in maximising the opportunities that a low-carbon economy can offer workers and communities, especially in regional and outer-suburban Australia.

That demands scientific inquiry and rigour, curiosity-driven discovery and pragmatic innovation, to bring those goals within reach.

That’s a big responsibility for the Australian research system and Australian researchers.

Especially given some of the constraints on our research workforce – the relentless treadmill of grant applications, the uncertainty that often faces early career researchers, and the disconnectedness that sometimes remains between basic research and Australian industry.  

I’m acutely aware of these challenges.

And I’m conscious that Australia’s research and development ecosystem can be better organised for the enormous capability-building challenges that are ahead of us.

That’s why the Albanese Government – and I pay tribute to my predecessor Ed Husic here – is undertaking a once-in-a-generation review of Australia’s research and development system.

That Strategic Examination of R&D – called in the Department the SERD, which I’m still not sold on – led by Robyn Denholm, Ian Chubb, Fiona Wood, and Kate Cornick, is analysing over 470 submissions, and providing, in my discussions with them, some acute intellectual leadership about the future shape and alignment of our research and development system.  

The government is deeply grateful to the panel for their work.

I know that the review will help us to develop a national roadmap toward a less fragmented, more coherent R&D system that makes Australia more productive, competitive and resilient.

I do feel the pressure, Professor Jagadish, not least because of your contribution this evening. I’m glad you’re not going to be here next year to mark my homework.

That is a good thing, to have science leadership standing up in a direct, nation interest-focussed, coherent and passionate way, setting out the challenge for Australian science, for government and for business, and all of the institutions that participate in this system.

I don’t want to miss the moment. I don’t want to miss the opportunity.

As Professor Jagadish says, the Expenditure Review Committee and the Cabinet are formidable places to go. I was in the former for my first time earlier this week, and I’m still here.

The review process has already illustrated, of course, that it’s not necessarily the quantity of R&D investment that really matters for Australia. Of course, it does.  

But it is also a question of alignment of effort, of coordination, and making sure the system is working together in the national interest.

For me – I can hear the Treasurer’s voice in my ear – that doesn’t mean dreaming up giant amounts of new policies and programs.

It means working with you to make sure that the system works and is aligned, and that we’re building confidence in our research capability’s capacity to work in a focussed way in the national interest.

Let me give you an example of what I mean.

Australia has an extraordinary mining and resources industry, in iron ore, proximate to steel processing partners and customers across the globe.

In 2023-24, iron ore and concentrates represented 20 per cent of Australian exports, or about $138 billion in export earnings.¹

But thanks to variable ore grades, a volatile and contested global trade environment, the shift to net zero emissions for iron and steelmakers amongst our partners, changing technology and patterns of demand, the future of Australia’s iron ore sector is far from assured.

Australia must move up the value chain to iron products and steel manufacturing. That is in our national interest, and in the interests of a more resilient and diverse industrial base that creates good jobs in industrial regions and suburbs.

That requires an active, focussed, disciplined, entrepreneurial Australian Government, focussed on these national interest objectives with ambition and purpose.

That is why the Albanese Government partnered with the Malinauskas Government in South Australia to intervene so decisively in Whyalla.

But this isn’t just an economic question – this great national interest question.

It’s about government’s role in investment terms, securing, developing and protecting industrial capability.

At its heart, it’s a science and technology question.

It’s a national research and development challenge in the race to establish a clean technological pathway for investment and industry that achieves the right low-emissions Australian process for Australian iron and Australian iron ores and for Australian steelmaking.  

The same can be said of the Albanese Government’s Future Made agenda for low-emissions processing of vital critical minerals.

We are the world’s number one producer of lithium, and a top five producer of more than a dozen other critical minerals.²  

But unless Australia develops faster, cleaner ways, more efficient ways of extracting and processing those minerals and turning them into the metals that the world needs, there’s no guarantee that industries like our iron ore sector or our mining sector these will retain their competitive advantage in global markets.

It's a science and technology challenge.

It’s a science and technology race.

And for me, that symbolises so much about what we must do as a science community focussed on the national interest.

I want to give a shoutout to my colleagues at the CSIRO, and Doug Hilton and the team, and all of the participants in that effort.

The Chief Scientist and I have been talking about this. How can we bring more focus and alignment of effort, more accountability, amongst the public sector and private sector participants and the universities in this area, in the national interest, in a way that Australians can see and be proud of.

Tomorrow, the Academy will launch its Australian Science, Australia’s Future: Science 2035 report, highlighting the opportunities and emerging gaps.

I want to congratulate the Academy on this valuable report, and I look forward to reading it over the coming days.

Of course, Australia will need more STEM-trained workers in the coming years and decades - but we also need a more diverse STEM workforce to unlock Australia’s full potential.

Those agitating against Australia’s migration program should stop and consider the fact that 60% of Australian engineers are migrants who brought their talents and capabilities to this country – that is entirely to our national advantage.³  

When it comes to Australian girls aspiring to a career in STEM, there’s work to be done.

According to the latest data, just 22% of female students feel confident enough to aspire to a career in STEM fields, compared with 43% of young men.⁴  

If those figures are to change – and we have to see them change – then that requires a whole of system effort in terms of the way that we engage girls and young women at school and at university in the enormous opportunities and the national ambition here.

Programs like the Superstars of STEM initiative, delivered by the Australian Government in partnership with Science and Technology Australia, are helping to promote inspiring STEM role models for Australian girls and women.

That’s not so different from the work the Academy does through its annual Ruby Payne-Scott Medal and Lecture series.

Payne-Scott was an incredible example to Australian girls with an interest in STEM – a world-leading researcher in radiology, radio-physics and astronomy whose career was unfairly interrupted by the infamous marriage bar.⁵

We’re working to make sure there are no barries in front of girls and women in Australian science.

I’m really looking forward to presenting the Ruby Payne-Scott Medal, and the Matthew Flinders Medal, to this evening’s recipients.

In closing, I really just want to say to all of you – there are no straightforward pathways here. There are no easy answers. But I am absolutely committed, as a member of a government that values Australian science, that respects the role that you play, and that is absolutely aware that if we are to meet the big national challenges of the future, that science and technology are going to play a central role in Australia’s capability and the future wellbeing and peace and security of Australia in our region. I feel the pressure and responsibility of these things acutely, I can assure you.

I can’t wait to get on with it.

Questions

Anna-Maria Arabia: Since 2018, our Academy has been advocating for what is now the strategic examination of R&D, so our call has been answered. Thank you. I must say, many in the room are eagerly awaiting the outcome of the report that’s about to drop by the end of the year. You know that R&D is a cross-portfolio matter, and it crosses jurisdictions, and we know that you don’t want to miss the moment, and we have much faith in you. How will you get your Cabinet colleagues to bring scale, coherence and investment in R&D?

Minister Ayres: Thank you. I’m really confident about the sense of purpose that the colleagues who are directly engaged in this work – my friend Jason Clare – and others bring to this set of questions.

I’ve stressed in the comments I’ve made in the speech a moment ago – what I wanted to stress was the role of making sure that what Australians can see, what Cabinet colleagues can see, and what the Parliament can see, is the relationship between the big national challenges we have in front of us, and the work of our scientists and researchers and developers.

That’s not just a challenge for the science community – that’s a challenge for us as political leaders to set that out in a convincing way. We’ve all got a role to play here. But I’m pretty confident in this Cabinet and this Albanese Government and its sense of purpose and mission about what we’ve got to focus on.

Anna-Maria Arabia: In this room, you have many willing people who wish you all strength to your arm in that endeavour. I think they call these supplementary questions in the Senate, so here’s my supplementary. How would you encourage the business sector to make a fair contribution to R&D?

Minister Ayres: Of course there will be a focus, as there was at the economic roundtables over the course of the last six weeks, on the tax arrangements and the incentives, and I expect that the SERD will have some things to say about that. We will carefully consider that set of issues. But I also think there’s a question here about purpose and accountability and commitment. In these areas of national interest focus – and I tried to draw out the iron and steel questions and the associated family of other critical minerals processing and strategic processing questions – these are questions that we have to secure in the national interest. I want to see more accountability and more engagement from all of us who are participating in the system, including our friends in the private sector.

It is the case that there are some factors that are weighing against Australia on this front. As our manufacturing intensity has declined, as our economic complexity and our export economic complexity has declined, and as firm size has declined in the Australian economy – that does put some barriers up against who the traditional participants in the R&D activity would be.

It's our job to change the composition of the future economy. There’s a chicken-and-egg thing going on here. We are going to have to make a maximum national effort to get this right.

Anna-Maria Arabia: Minister, we’re witnessing an unprecedented and wholesale reorganisation of the R&D system globally as a result of the measures in the United States. What challenges and opportunities do you think these present for Australia?

Minister Ayres: Well, there’s a lot of interest in working with the scientists and researchers working in Australia. It’s a great place for young scientists to come and live and work. There’s enormous opportunity. I’m very enthusiastic about the opportunities for collaboration. We should not forget our homegrown researchers as well.

I just say this as well – scientific research is an essentially collaborative exercise and endeavour. Where there’s turning inwards in some economies, some jurisdictions around the world, Australia’s interest really has been served as an outward-facing, confident nation, whether that’s in economic terms, diplomatic terms, geostrategic terms, but also in terms of our scientists. One of the characteristics of our science community is that confident, outward-looking focus, and that’s something that’s really important.  

 

Endnotes

1. https://www.dfat.gov.au/sites/default/files/australias-goods-services-by-top-25-exports-2023-24.pdf
2. AIMR 2024 at a glance, https://www.ga.gov.au/aimr2024/aimr-2024-at-a-glance
3. Engineers Australia, Improving access to skills, 12 March 2025, https://www.engineersaustralia.org.au/news-and-media/2025/03/improving-access-skills-new-guide-empowers-businesses-hire-global
4. STEM Equity Monitor, Aspirations for a STEM career in the future, https://www.industry.gov.au/publications/stem-equity-monitor/primary-and-secondary-school-data/youth-perceptions-and-attitudes-stem
5. W.M. Goss and Claire Hooker, 'Payne-Scott, Ruby Violet (1912–1981)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/payne-scott-ruby-violet-15036/text26233, published first in hardcopy 2012, accessed online 1 September 2025.