Australia’s future economic and social success will be based on the rock of our knowledge and skills base – our creative people in universities, in research institutions, in schools and in business.

Science and engineering are therefore the central ingredients in securing this success.

But the sober reality is that governments have historically failed to give proper recognition and support to the nation’s pursuit of engineering and science.

And – as a group – scientists, technologists and engineers have lacked the political access and clout to consistently influence the decision making process, both national and state.

In this State, until we moved to develop this Policy statement, there was a hole where science, engineering and technology policy should have been within the counsels of government.

There has also been no mechanism for setting the science, engineering and technology agenda Statewide, in a co-ordinated and integrated way across the whole of government.

Today marks a genuine commitment to change this position.

The Creating Our Future Policy Statement signifies our recognition of the importance of innovation, research and value-adding to Victoria’s future.

It also records our belief that Victoria has a real competitive advantage in science and engineering, but that throughout the world others are working hard to improve their performance and we must take a strategic approach to maintaining out lead.

The Government believes it is now imperative to give science, engineering and technology the heightened priority and the attention it deserves.

To assist us along this path, I initiated a consultation process last year involving leaders in the science and engineering community.

I met people across the spectrum – educators, researchers, professional associations, business leaders from high tech firms – to seek their opinions and call for suggestions on where the Victorian Government should direct its efforts.

Most people shared our view that by 2010, when Australia moves to free trade under APEC, Victoria must be highly competitive – with excellence in science, engineering and technology the core factor in Victoria’s competitiveness in the knowledge economy.

A critical concern the Premier and I had was how the State Government could best make a difference, given the Commonwealth holds many of the key funding levers – through grants, through respected organisations such as CSIRO, through allocations for the tertiary education sector and through tax policy.

The consultation process made it abundantly clear that the State needs to concentrate on enhancing out science, engineering and technology capabilities, in particular in areas where we have good prospects of retaining competitive advantage including:

• the automotive sector
• the communications, information and multimedia industries
• health services and pharmaceuticals
• food and natural fibres
• education, and professional services.

Creating Our Future is, therefore, about developing a strategic approach to ‘getting it right’.

It is about setting an agenda (both State and Federal), creating long term alliances and re-focussing State resources.

The Policy Statement also outlines modest spending initiatives, but it was not designed to offer a ‘bucket of cash’ – indeed, during the consultation process it became clear that people did not expect the Victorian Government to throw money at the issues – they wanted something more thoughtful and systematic.

The Government has concluded that to move forward we must work in a new way.

We must work simultaneously on six broad strategic fronts. We need to:

• consult more effectively about science, engineering and technology priorities
• further improve the science, engineering and technology knowledge base
• strengthen the ability to commercialise good ideas
• promote technology diffusion, ensuring rapid adoption of new processes and new technology
• provide a world class science, engineering and technology environment to attract and retain world class enterprise
• foster linkages and synergies between all Victoria’s science, engineering and technology capabilities, so as to forge an internationally recognised knowledge network.

The Victorian Government cannot drive all these advances on its own, but we can make a difference by providing consistent, intelligent leadership, creating the right climate for investment and facilitating linkages between players to enable them to make the most of strengths and advances in the fields of engineering and science.

The bottom line is that the Victorian government recognises that science, engineering and technology are key drivers of future prosperity and quality of life. They are not just important because of their contribution to our future economic competitiveness.

Excellence in science and engineering is a mark of a developed and mature society which values knowledge in its own right as well as the material benefits that it brings.

We want to ensure that our policy directions and funding commitments are strategic, and we want to do this with the science and engineering community rather than in isolation.

Creating Our Future is the beginning of a solid commitment to meeting the challenges we face – a partnership with engineers and scientists, in research and in business, to plan the long term future of our knowledge assets.

Looking to the challenges of Victoria’s future in the global knowledge economy, it is great to be able to state confidently that we certainly do not start from a zero base.

Scientific and engineering excellence underpins our current economic strength – enterprises based on these disciplines contribute an estimated $33 billion, or 30% of gross state product, to the Victorian economy each year.

Our automotive industry – for instance – is a ‘university’ of technology all on its own, exporting design, cars and components. Victorian businesses make products with global appeal – everything from laser microscopes to the environmentally friendly dishwashers developed with RMIT’s Centre for Design.

Our clean food is in demand in markets from Kobe to Dubai.

Our medical research leads the world, providing solutions to real problems afflicting humankind – development of the bionic ear in Victoria is just one obvious example, and the new flu vaccine being developed by Biota and Glaxo Wellcome is another.

Victoria is also becoming a global multimedia hub.

And our environmental expertise and educational services are in demand throughout the Asian region.

I could go on, but I won’t because you know the story better than I do.

Of all Australian States, Victoria is the best placed to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the global knowledge economy.

Victoria is Australia’s most important manufacturing state, with a rich history of endeavour and achievement in the fields of science, engineering and technology, often linked to advanced manufacturing.

The challenge for the Government is to ensure that its programs produce the greatest effect, including leveraging off those of the Commonwealth wherever possible.

We are committed to long term consultative planning for the future, and we will implement a range of immediate initiatives intended to raise the profile of science and engineering and to enhance the strategic focus of Victoria’s existing major commitments in these fields.

Let me now outline how we will approach the strategic fronts for State Government action I mentioned earlier.

Consultation and communication with the science and engineering community is essential if we are to make the right decisions that will keep us on track towards a knowledge rich future.

A lot of good ideas were put forward during the consultation process leading up to Creating Our Future, and we have taken up many of these in preparing it.

With the release of this statement on science, engineering and technology, the Government is signalling that we view these areas as a major priority, and that we will give scientists and engineers a stronger voice at the highest level of State Government.

We have made a start by appointing one of Victoria’s leading scientists – Professor Adrienne Clarke – as Lieutenant Governor. Professor Clarke will be taking a high profile in articulating the importance to this State of excellence in engineering and science.

Moreover, to give the engineering and science community real proximity and real access to the Government’s policy making mechanisms, we are establishing the Science, Engineering and Technology Taskforce.

The Taskforce will be co-chaired by the Premier of Victoria and Professor Clarke.

The Taskforce will be charged with providing high level strategic advice, and will be instrumental in setting the agenda for science, engineering and technology, taking a Statewide view across the whole of government.

The first major job of the Premier’s Taskforce will be to review, by the end of 1998, all of Victoria’s public sector activities in science, engineering and technology.

The Taskforce will make specific recommendations on financial priorities and policy directions for the future, to ensure that we make the best possible use of Victoria’s investment in scientists, engineers and capital assets.

This will be a task of considerable complexity and impact – not least because the Victorian Government spends over $100 million on research and development through agencies covering areas from infrastructure through to health, agriculture, energy, minerals, environment protection and conservation.

Members of the Taskforce have invaluable personal experience that will be a real asset to this important exercise.

The Taskforce will mobilise some of our best talents to focus on what our forward agenda should be and how Victoria’s intellectual resources can best be used to address priority issues.

It will give the science and engineering community unprecedented access and proximity to the Government, and unparalleled opportunities to influence the science and engineering agenda in Victoria.

The Taskforce will be inclusive: it will form its own committees to look at particular issues, drawing in people with additional expertise as required.

I am delighted to be able to announce the appointment to the Taskforce of Dr. Colin Adam, Colin Armit, Professor David Beanland, Dr. Edwina Cornish, Professor Suzanne Cory, Professor Peter Darvall, Peter Dempsey, Kim Edwards, Dr. John Funder, John Grace, Professor Frank Larkins, Peter Laver, Dr. Kurt Liedtke, Professor Graham Mitchell, Dr. Bill Schofield and Dr. Jack Wynhoven, eminent Victorians who will make a real difference to the agenda for science, engineering and technology in this State.

On top of this, the Government has appointed Professor Margaret Britz as its first Principal Adviser on Science and Engineer Policy, who will head the new specialist Policy Unit now set up within the Department of State Development.

This Policy Unit will provide support for the Taskforce, and ensure a strong focus for science, engineering and technology within the agency with primary responsibility for economic development.

The new unit will also provide advice to me in my role as science and technology Minister, as distinct from my role as industry Minister.

The Government signalled its intention to get closer to Victorian innovators by, for the first time in this State, assigning the added dimension of science, engineering and technology to the industry portfolio, and clearly underlining its important as a fundamental building block for prosperity.

It makes sense for the science and engineering community – the originators of the good ideas that underpin wealth creation – and the business community – translating those ideas into products and services – to each have an ear of the same Minister.

But I do not see myself as Minister for Industry first and Minister for Science and Minister for Engineering second, with science and engineering merely contributors to business growth.

I see my role as an advocate for science and engineering, with a strategic overview across the whole of State Government and beyond, for example in dealing with the Commonwealth Government.

At a time when synergies are developing between seemingly unrelated technologies, it also makes sense to have such a strategic overview so that opportunities can be identified and seized.

The Government has already moved to this Taskforce model in the areas of multimedia and food, to ensure that where we have an advantage we can work smarter, more efficiently and more quickly to capitalise on it.

So in addition to doing all the things that an industry Minister does – including listening to business and seeing what can be done to smooth its path – I intend to maintain strong links with the science and engineering community to assist in moving the knowledge agenda forward.

Of course I realise that key issues and proposals that will be raised with us will cover several tiers of government.

We recognise that the Commonwealth Government, through research grants and the

R&D activities of its agencies, maintains the pivotal role in R&D funding.

The Victorian Government therefore welcomes the review of national priority setting recently completed by the Chief Scientist, Professor John Stocker, and in particular its focus on co-ordinated action.

Victoria looks forward to working effectively with the Commonwealth to improve the process for determining R&D priorities.

The State similarly welcomes the positive approach to industry policy proposed in the Mortimer report released by the Commonwealth last week, and in particular the recognition that Australia’s ability to innovate, its R&D, will be the driver of Australia’s competitiveness.

And it is impressive that Mortimer seeks to rebuild incentives to innovate.

Some of the particular recommendations, however, especially those concerning support for R&D and the CRC program, are of concern and need to be considered very carefully before we determine our reaction.

The Commonwealth Government made a serious error recently when it cut the R&D concession from 150% to 125%, and we must now get all the Federal policy settings right.

A key issue with both Federal and State implications is improving the status of engineering and science amongst Australians.

Insufficient numbers of young Australians are studying the basics of science and engineering, and we have a low proportion of engineers and physical scientists among university graduates compared with competing economies.

If this continues we cannot sustain our competitive advantage.

In reality, scientists and engineers do great things for Victoria.

Everyone here in this room is aware that Victoria has a tremendous wealth of creativity and knowledge in its people, institutions and businesses. But, as someone said during the consultation process leading up to today, this is a well kept secret.

We all know about the Parkville Strip and the Clayton and Fisherman’s Bend clusters. We all know that Victoria is the Australian R&D leader.

We all know that what our society is like in the twenty-first century will depend on making Victoria evens stronger in science, engineering and technology.

But, most Victorians are not aware of this State’s intellectual assets, nor the solid foundation they provide for Victoria’s economy and our quality of life, nor the need to make sure we maintain and enhance that foundation to provide jobs and a higher quality of life in the future.

Victorians rapidly adopt innovations – the Internet, digital phones and new services – without making the link between improvement they bring to quality of life and the advances in science and engineering on which they are based.

Our young people see ‘science’ as a good thing, but they have an image of scientists and engineers as poorly paid, with often unglamorous jobs.

We – and by this I mean the Government, business and scientists and engineers – need to change that.

I am putting forward the simple proposition that we need to raise the acceptance of the value of science, engineering and technology and its importance for the future of this State and this nation.

Boosting awareness and open communication will lead to better linkages for innovation, and will give Victorians generally a much better appreciation of what our very talented scientists and engineers are doing, and how their activities bring us all real benefits.

We must therefore find ways of encouraging young people to pursue careers in science and engineering, and rewarding people who are leaders in these fields.

We must use their discoveries and innovations to drive sustainable wealth creation and help achieve our social and environmental goals.

One practical initiative we will now take – to catch the eye of our youngest Victorians – is to build a new Planetarium (at a cost of $6 million) at Scienceworks.

To further enhance Victoria’s already strong science and engineering knowledge base, recognise excellence, and promote the stature of science and engineering as a professional career choice, the Government has decided to immediately:

• inspire personal commitment by inaugurating an annual $50,000 Victoria Prize for exceptional and conspicuous achievement in science, engineering and technology
• create six prestigious Victoria Fellowships, of $15,000 each, to be awarded annually to young leaders in the fields of science and engineering
• start the process of reversing the downward trend in student interest in tertiary studies in the physical sciences and post-graduate studies in engineering with the appointment of a working party to recommend action that can be taken in time for the 1998 academic year.

To enhance collaboration between academia and industry to achieve goals in science, engineering and technology, strengthen the ability to commercialise good ideas and promote the diffusion of new technology throughout Victorian business, the Government is:

• providing $16million from 1996 to 2000 to the Strategic Industry Research Foundation
• allocating $1 million from 1997 to 2000 to support Co-operative Research Centres established in Victoria
• providing almost $4 million from 1993 to 1998 for the Advanced Engineering Centre for Manufacturing
• allocating $930,000 from 1997 to 1999 to the Victorian Innovation Centre
• providing $500,000 in grants to the Industrial Research Institute Swinburne
• providing $100,000 for course development, promotion and scholarships to be awarded in 1999 and 2000 to high achievers in the Foundation for Manufacturing Education program.

Vigorous investment recruitment, combined with the drawcards of a strong R&D community and a skilled workforce, will continue to attract and retain world class enterprise, especially high tech firms establishing their own R&D capabilities.

Already eight of Australia’s top ten R&D spending firms base their R&D in Victoria.

The Government’s investment recruitment program has already attracted internationally prominent firms that are world leading users of advanced technology, with recent investments by Robert Bosch, Shimadzu, Siemens, Olivetti and UCB SA, to name just a few.

Programs such as Investment Ready are helping smaller home grown enterprises to gear up for commercialisation of their innovations.

Together with our emphasis on recruiting technology-focussed investors and promoting science and engineering generally, these programs are part of our strategies in technology diffusion and commercialisation of good ideas.

Our industry policies and programs will continue to place a strong emphasis on innovation – and its basis of strengths in science and engineering – as a key driver of business growth.

The Government is also intent upon fostering linkages and synergies to forge an internationally recognised knowledge network that will result in innovative products and services.

Facilitating dynamic partnerships, as far as possible networking and mobilising towards a common goal the whole of Victoria’s science, engineering and technology capabilities, will be a priority for the Victorian Government.

The Government’s multimedia strategy, Victoria 21, has already shown that this approach can work.

The Science, Engineering and Technology Taskforce will identify where new linkages can be made, acting as a focus and clearing house for good ideas and forming the nucleus of an economy wide network.

The consultation process that has led to Creating The Future has made it abundantly clear that while some of the issues are obvious the solutions are not. This policy statement therefore does not seek to represent the end of the process.

This is only the beginning.

There are a lot of big issues that need to be addressed, and the Government does not pretend to know all the answers.

We have only started with the initiatives announced today because more work is needed, in consultation with the science and engineering community, before definitive responses to some of the key issues can be developed.

But the initiatives are important because of what they say about the approach that we are taking.

Ideas from the consultation process that have not been given our immediate attention will now be examined to see how they can be taken forward.

One example is the many views on and suggestions for various kinds of scholarships and cadetships in science and engineering. We will be making a symbolic start by supporting MTIA’s new cadetship scheme, funded by industry and targeted to achieve specific industry aims.

But in other areas, such as incentives to encourage young people to move into basic science where there is no immediate end use, solutions will be more complex and providing advice on options will be part of the agenda for the Taskforce and the Departments of State Development and Education.

Victoria’s future prosperity depends on being at the leading edge.

Science, engineering and technology hold the key to maintaining that edge.

The Victorian Government is committed to giving them priority, building on existing strengths to ensure the community enjoys the benefits of a renewed public and private sector focus on innovation.

If we get it right, Victoria’s strengths in these fields, enhanced by the kinds of initiatives outlined in Creating The Future together with industry facilitation and development programs, plus programs and policies which emerge from the ongoing consultation process through the new Taskforce, will ensure the State can continue to attract and retain the industries of the future.

Victorians, working together to increase, enhance and above all use our vital intellectual capital, can make Victorian business more successful and deliver the jobs and quality of life that our community deserves, today and into the twenty-first century.

Everyone invited here today – whether from business, academia, the research community or a government agency – will be crucial to shaping the Victoria of tomorrow.

I welcome your interest in the Government’s views on science, engineering and technology and seek your collaboration in creating our common future.