Senator Kim Carr has responded to the CRC Association's statement that the Program was the Cinderella science scheme in this years Federal Budget, stating:
 
"Forget Cinderella.

This is the Katharine Hepburn of innovation initiatives –remarkable for its capacity to inspire, its effortless authority, its contribution to social progress, and its enduring beauty."
 
Full speech

Senator the Hon Kim Carr

26 May 2009
ADDRESS TO THE CRC ASSOCIATION AWARDS DINNER

Parliament House
Canberra, ACT
 
Two weeks ago the Government brought down a nation-building Budget.

It was a Budget that supports jobs today by creating infrastructure for tomorrow.

It was a Budget for recovery.

And as I’m sure everyone here is aware – even if the mainstream media has largely overlooked the fact – it was also an innovation Budget.

At its heart was the Government’s response to last year’s reviews of the national innovation system and Australian higher education.

The first and most important element of that response was a package of landmark reforms – to university teaching and learning, to business innovation support, to funding for public sector research, and more.

The second element was $5.7 billion in new spending to give effect to those reforms – $3.1 billion for research and innovation, and the balance for university teaching and learning.

That includes $400 million for clean energy research infrastructure, which forms part of the $4.5 billion Clean Energy Initiative announced on Budget night.

The total Commonwealth research and innovation budget for 2009-10 will approach $8.6 billion – up 25 per cent on this financial year.

This is the biggest increase and the biggest commitment in real terms since records began.

It lifts federal spending on research and innovation to 0.73 per cent of GDP – a level not seen since the early nineties.

Any way you look at it, this is a major investment in the renewal and expansion of the national innovation system after years of neglect.

CRC Program

But what about Cinderella?

What about the Cooperative Research Centres Program?

Let me say how pleased I am to see you’ve made it to the ball.

I hope you won’t have cause to rush off early.

I don’t think that’s very likely, because the CRC Program isn’t Cinderella at all.

In her review last year, Professor Mary O’Kane called it “iconic”.

Powering Ideas – the Government’s new innovation agenda for the twenty-first century – notes that the program has “been instrumental in promoting public-private research partnerships”.

This is a point worth emphasising.

Powering Ideas also declares improving collaboration within the research sector and between researchers and industry a national priority.

This has actually been a focus of the Government’s innovation reform agenda right from the beginning.

Witness Enterprise Connect, which is dedicated – among other things – to improving links between Australian firms and research providers.

We have built on this foundation in the Budget with new initiatives such as:

• the Joint Research Engagement Scheme to promote collaboration between universities and industry
• the Collaborative Research Networks Scheme to increase the research capacity of smaller universities by helping them hook them up with larger ones, and
• the Commonwealth Commercialisation Institute to help translate great ideas from universities, public research agencies, and innovative firms into money-making products and services.

The mission-based funding compacts to be negotiated with universities will reinforce this emphasis on community outreach and industry engagement.

Consultations on the framework for compact development will occur this year.
 
All of the evidence tells us that collaboration is the best way to unlock latent capacity in the innovation system and the surest way to come up with inventions and discoveries that really count.

It is something we have to get a lot better at.

In this environment, the CRC Program assumes even greater importance.

If we want a model of how collaboration can and should work, this is it.

Over 1,230 companies large and small were involved in research collaborations through the CRC Program last financial year – with the small outnumbering the large by nearly two to one.

CRCs were involved in 448 international alliances and held 465 overseas patents – along with their 201 Australian patents.

More than 280 postgraduates were awarded degrees – two-thirds of them receiving PhDs, and all of them enriched by their exposure to the real world of industry.

This is a terrific achievement, and it is even more impressive when you recall that the CRC Program has been maintaining the same high standard for eighteen brilliant years.

That’s why the Government has invested $3 billion in 168 CRCs since the program began.

And that’s why we intend to invest another $682 million in CRCs over the next four years.

This is a lot of money.

Would we like it to be more?

Of course we would.

But in this Budget as in every Budget, priorities had to be set.

The Government’s priority this time round was to deal with those parts of the innovation system whose very sustainability was at risk.

Hence our focus on:

• addressing the indirect costs of university research
• increasing the stipend for research students
• improving the indexation of research block grants, and
• building long-term research infrastructure.

Hence our radical overhaul of the tax incentives for business research and development, with a new R&D Tax Credit that doubles the base rate of R&D support for smaller firms, and boosts the rate for larger firms by a third.

The research institutions and innovative businesses that make up each CRC stand to gain enormously from these investments and reforms, and the CRC Program as a whole will be richer for that.

Announcement

Unlike some other elements of the innovation system, its sustainability has never been in question.

This is an ongoing program with indexed funding.

It has been a pillar of the Australian innovation system for the better part of a generation, and that’s not about to change.

My aim is to make it even stronger.

That’s why I have adopted Professor Mary O’Kane’s recommendations to:

• restore public good as a key objective
• extend eligibility for funding to the humanities, arts and social sciences
• place more emphasis on the needs of end-users
• increase funding and organisational flexibility, and fund CRCs for up to ten years, subject to rigorous review.

It is my pleasure to announce tonight that I am acting on another of Professor O’Kane’s recommendations by introducing annual funding rounds.

The eleventh selection round is already in progress and the successful applicants should be announced in July.

In the meantime, I will soon open a twelfth round for groups seeking funding from 2010.

Applications for the twelfth round will close in August.

Annual funding rounds will sharpen the program’s focus and make it more responsive.

They will bring us closer to the ideal espoused by Professor O’Kane, in which CRCs are “about coming together for a mutually beneficial objective with an end-point in sight”. (p. 55)

The future

When I look around at this distinguished audience – when I reflect on the achievements of tonight’s award winners – I am reminded yet again of just how important your work is.

Forget Cinderella.

This is the Katharine Hepburn of innovation initiatives –remarkable for its capacity to inspire, its effortless authority, its contribution to social progress, and its enduring beauty.