Acknowledgements

I begin by acknowledging the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we meet today, and pay my respects to their Elders, past and present.

I extend that acknowledgment to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People here today.

Elevating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge systems is one of this Government’s core scientific and research priorities.

Because we appreciate that Australia’s future economic and social success depends on all of us – in Government, business, universities and civil society – learning from knowledge systems that have supported First Nations success on this continent for 65,000 years or more.

I would also like to acknowledge His Excellency Gabriele Visentin, Ambassador of the European Delegation to Australia;

Maria Cristina Russo, Deputy Director-General for Innovation, Prosperity, and International Cooperation, in the Research and Innovation Directorate of the European Commission;

Excellencies, Members of the Diplomatic Corps;

Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott, our host for today’s forum;

The Group of Eight, Chancellors and Vice-Chancellors, leaders of the learned Academies and peak research bodies, representatives from industry, and distinguished guests.

This Australian moment

Nearly 15 years ago, one of the better writers to come out of the Canberra Press Gallery, George Megalogenis, published a book called The Australian Moment (2012).

Australia, he said, was the West’s ‘last best role model’.

Conquering the GFC and embracing the Asian century as a renewed, reformed and open trading economy.

An economy ‘blessed with the world’s biggest quarry in China’s backyard’, selling ‘dirt in exchange for brains’ that our economy needed. 

From the vantage point of 2026, that picture looks too good to be true – and it was.

Free marketeers and neoliberals inferred that the path to national prosperity ran through resources exports and deindustrialisation.

Along the way, they failed to account for any global future less secure and more fragmented –

Characterised by escalating great power competition and a premium on supply chain security, energy security and economic resilience.

A future where these sources of pressure produced a resurgence in industrial and research and development policy across the world.

This is the moment – a very different kind of Australian moment – that the world presents us today.

The global economy is changing with unprecedented speed.

Artificial intelligence – its limitless possibilities and its potential hazards – is on the cusp of transforming every industry and occupation.

Driving renewable energy and energy security requires new technology and innovation, new patterns of investment and consumption, new ways of organising regional and urban environments.

The rules-based order of the post-Cold War world has given way to strategic disruption and trade volatility.

The concentration of manufacturing and advanced technological capabilities in a select few major economies, combined with aggressive competition and subsidies, is putting significant pressure on Australia’s manufacturing and industrial capability.

The OECD says industrial subsidies today are the highest they’ve been since the global recession in 2009; and that these historic levels of subsidisation are transforming the shape of global markets.

And we only need to look to Ukraine and the Middle East to know that this is also a more dangerous world than anyone anticipated a generation ago.

The post-Cold War confidence – about the rules-based order, and the benefits to Australia of rapid economic and trade liberalisation – looks more like complacency today. 

What Australia does today – how it marshals its physical and material and intellectual resources, turns them into economic success and shares the benefits of that success – will be consequential for decades to come.

The paradox is that this more complex and challenging world is full of opportunity for a continent with vast resources, sturdy and resilient people, robust institutions, a colossal future energy advantage and proximity to the fastest growing region in the world.

This should be Australia’s moment.

A moment that good crisis management and large mining exports cannot adequately meet on their own – important though they are.

That demands we create more value – process our critical minerals and use our significant brains, guts and talents to do so.

That demands Australian focus, strategic clarity, statecraft and scale in the way that we organise our public and private research and development capabilities.

To make Australia the indispensable nation in our region and an indispensable global partner in technological, industrial, resources and energy and R&D terms.

That calls for closer cooperation with trusted scientific and research partners – the European Union and Horizon Europe associates foremost among them – to solve the biggest shared challenges we face together.

Ambitious Australia

Australia’s success in this moment depends on making the most of our research and development system.

The message of the Ambitious Australia report – the most comprehensive independent review of R&D in this country for nearly 20 years – was clear and unequivocal.

Australia must make every single research dollar count.

For every dollar invested in R&D, the CSIRO estimates an average economic return of $3.50.

That’s not bad – but it must be better.

That must mean less fragmentation and duplication across the system –

A more contemporary and mission-led framework for the governance and statecraft of national science and research –

And an all-in approach that sees not just government, but the private sector and investment community helping to drive a sustained uplift in support for research and commercialisation.

This year’s Federal Budget – a responsible budget fashioned in difficult times – commences the decadal reform journey that Ambitious Australia sets out for government.

An ambitious suite of reforms that enhance the effectiveness of the Research and Development Tax Incentive, expand venture capital incentives and provide joined-up, effective leadership through a new National Resilience and Science Council.

We know how much work there is yet to do – but these are important first steps for a big reform agenda that we all know Australia needs.

Horizon Europe

This Budget, of course, also provides for Australia’s association to the current round of Horizon Europe.

Less than 80 days ago, the Prime Minister joined with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to announce formal treaty talks on Australia’s association to the largest research and development fund anywhere in the world.

This week, my Department and the European Commission initialled the text of that treaty, possibly setting a new world record for fastest negotiation.

That treaty will now proceed through the European Commission’s and Australia’s domestic treaty-making processes.

I expect to see Australian researchers and organisations ready to apply for funding to participate in and lead Horizon Europe projects from early 2027.  

And demonstrating, publicly, tangible outcomes in areas of research that Australians value.

I do want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to some of those who have brought this milestone within reach.

Maria Cristina, and Ambassador Visentin, your presence here today is a reflection of the European Commission’s friendship with Australia.

As we move toward ratifying and finalising the treaty, you can be assured that a resolute friend is joining not only your flagship research fund, but your four decades-long transformative mission to improve the world with first-class, high-quality innovation.

In the domestic context, I want to thank ministerial colleagues – Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Trade Minister Don Farrell – as well as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese who, like me, is deeply invested in seeing Australia succeed as a member of Horizon Europe.

I want to give special recognition to the leadership that the Group of Eight has played in this process, with its commitment to match the Australian Government’s contribution so that all parts of Australia’s research system can benefit from Horizon Europe. 

Vicki Thomson, who is here today, deserves particular recognition.

This could not have been achieved without the Group of Eight’s leadership, sustained advocacy and co-contribution.

I am so grateful for their investment in a future for Australian research and development that is ambitious, grander in scale, more effective in its commercialisation and deeply connected with our friends and partners in Europe and the Atlantic, and a little closer to home, peers like South Korea and New Zealand.

Partnership for maximum impact

If you listen to some of the Government’s critics, you’d be forgiven for believing that any contribution we make to an international partnership or project is a contribution that robs an Australian of a dollar instead.

It’s a troglodytic, zero-sum reactionary mentality that threatens to hold Australia back from achieving real scale and impact in our efforts to innovate successfully.

You only have to look across the Tasman.

The Kiwis have earned more than a 20-fold return on their initial contribution to Horizon Europe, participating in projects worth more than €247 million combined. 

New Zealand’s researchers are achieving outsized impact, working with likeminded partners to tackle climate change, improve food security and so much else.

So many of those research priorities, funded under Pillar II of Horizon Europe, are the priorities of Australian research and industry, too.

Australia consistently achieves more in academic and research terms than economies of comparable or greater size and population.

That is because of this country’s world-class researchers, many of whom publish in leading journals and win prestigious prizes.

Not to mention our globally competitive universities, with half a dozen ranked among the world’s top 50.

Australia’s national science institutions – the CSIRO chief amongst them – are internationally recognised for their excellence.

Typically, it has been at the scaleup and commercialisation phases where Australia has struggled to transform research excellence into competitive products and services onshore.

All too often, Australian discoveries have resembled our primary commodities trade.

Shipped offshore along with our wool, coal and iron ore.

Purchased back from world markets in the form of a fully developed, value-added high-tech good or application.

Association to Horizon Europe is a gamechanger for Australian research and development.

Connecting Australian researchers to $155 billion AUD worth of R&D investment spanning clean energy, health and biotechnology, digital technology and AI, materials science, space, and advanced manufacturing, all shared priority areas under Pillar II of the Horizon Europe program.

Embedding Australian research projects in an international research-to-innovation pipeline with a proven track record of industrial and entrepreneurial success.

Australian universities joining consortia with researchers from Germany’s Leibniz Institutes, or the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or France’s CNRS.

Not to mention any number of major European industrial firms and partners with a real investment in the success of Horizon Europe’s work.

Australian participation in Horizon Europe brings a lot to the table.

Unique plant and animal biodiversity.

The world’s largest marine territory.

The agricultural expertise that comes from eking a living from a big, diverse, temperamental and sometimes unforgiving landmass.

A big endowment of the critical minerals that will power the world’s shift to renewable sources of energy generation and transmission.

Europe will need those critical minerals just as much as Australia; this country is a valuable ally in that global race for energy and technology competitiveness.

Together, through the Australia-EU Critical Minerals Partnership, we are already working closely to build secure, resilient critical minerals supply chains that support shared interests and objectives. 

But it is through Horizon Europe that we can best maximise the benefits of these minerals and metals, together, in the interests of all Europeans and all Australians.

An all-in approach

I want to be clear about my view of Horizon Europe’s significance for Australia’s research sector.

In these testing times, Australia is being invited to share in the world’s deepest pool of research funding and scientific-industrial talent.

If we want to meet this Australian moment, we must grab this opportunity with both hands.

It requires an all-in approach.

Not just teams of applicants from research-intensive sandstone universities, but all Australian researchers from across the university sector, collaborating to produce the best proposals and applications.

Not only researchers from our inner-city campuses, but regional and rural researchers, too. 

Not just scientists and technology experts, but also researchers in the humanities and social sciences working together with STEM colleagues.

Embedding new clean energy systems in industrial regions, anticipating and mitigating the effects of demographic change, adapting to artificial intelligence in health and education settings, and so much more.

Not just Australian researchers joining European projects but also forming new partnerships and consortia with friends and allies closer to home – some of them associate members of Horizon Europe in their own right.

The luxury that Australia does not have is time.

The current conflict in the Middle East has reminded Australians just how quickly time runs out when we live at the end of global supply chains.

The mission for a Future Made in Australia – one that maximises Australia’s long-term advantage in clean energy to ensure national security and economic resilience – is all the more urgent today.

Australia maximises its success by joining with global partners to expands technological limits in priority areas. 

But we should start from the knowledge that the current round of Horizon Europe concludes at the end of 2027.

Our Government will need to make decisions after that about associating to Horizon Europe beyond the current round, so until then Australian researchers and institutions need to squeeze every bit of value out of this opportunity.

There are calls in the pipeline for projects that improve energy efficiency and sustainability in digital infrastructure, unlocking new advanced cooling systems and less energy-intensive operations.

Drive industrial decarbonisation through new electrification technologies and novel low-carbon energy storage techniques for industrial facilities.

Or lifting shared capabilities in quantum computing and processing as applied to systems and technologies on Earth and even in space.

I want Australian teams and consortia to be ready with the strongest bids for funding on day 1.

Australians, working with the best talent and funding anywhere in the world, can do anything to which we set our minds.

And we have not a second to waste.

I just can’t wait to see what we can achieve together through Horizon Europe.

Thanks very much.