July 22, 2014

Senate Standing Committee on Economics Inquiry into Australia’s Innovation System: IRU Submission

The inquiry into the Australian innovation system provides an opportunity to review the policy settings and programmes that underpin the Australian research effort and innovation environment, testing their effectiveness in supporting the outcomes required of industry, universities, other research bodies, and Government. The Innovative Research Universities’ (IRU’s) guiding themes to the complex suite of issues the Inquiry is to pursue are:

i. that Australian research and innovation is inextricably part of global developments: we contribute to world innovation, we receive from it and our ideas, products and people traverse the world;

ii. the need for effective, coherent, long term incentives for industry driven research and translational research which balances the long standing stimulus for pure research;

iii. the importance of an open, effective research and innovation system that encourages and supports valuable research wherever it may arise;

iv. the need for an effective long term research infrastructure program, aligned to research needs within the global context; and

v. the importance of developing a skilled research workforce across all industries.

The IRU looks forward to supporting the Committee in its inquiry. We provide below our first submission targeting the guiding themes listed above. We expect to follow up over the course of the Inquiry with further submissions and other public statem.

Download the full submission in PDF form.