PRIME MINISTER:
Friends, you know at the beginning of your video you summed up this issue so well, that we are absolutely of the same mind. You said, I recall there, ‘In today’s world, you can either drive change or be driven by it.’ And you said that you, at the University of Wollongong choose to lead it. That is the choice my government makes for Australia. We lead change. We are not going to be victims of change; we are going to be drivers and shapers of it. Because these are the most exciting times in human history, these are times when the pace and scale of change is utterly without precedent. And that is because of the transformation that we have seen in technology. In our own generation, the changes are extraordinary. I don’t need to enumerate on it, this audience would understand them better than most. And so we are in a time of rapid transformation, driven by science, driven by technology.
So what do we do? Do we say it’s all too challenging? Do we say it’s all too frightening? Do we hide under the doona and hope it goes away? Well, there are people that want to do that and that’s where you see, in the broader economic debate around the world, calls for protectionism, rejecting globalisation, wanting to put up walls - metaphorical and real.
The truth is that we must embrace the change and make sure it works for us. Ensure that these times of rapid change and transformation help us build a fairer, more inclusive society.
Ensure that everybody benefits from the increased prosperity. Make sure we take those opportunities to improve the health of our citizens, as you described there. To ensure that our children wherever they live can get access to the best education, to resources that would have been unimaginable a generation ago.
This is a time of enormous opportunity; I want to congratulate the University of Wollongong for the way in which it is embracing it.
Your Molecular Horizons Facility, powered as you’ve described, or at the very heart of it with your Titan Krios Cry-electron microscope, is going to enable you, and your scientists, and indeed your collaborators like Bob Graham - I saw there from the St Vincent’s campus, there he his, hello. You will be – you’ll become very popular, that extremely scenic train ride to Wollongong will become even better patronised.
I see Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, whose great commitment to Wollongong – enjoys that train ride as I do too.
But this is a big opportunity and I think as Bob knows, as you know, Australia is a leader in medical and health-related research. We are real world leaders with a cutting edge work at many institutes around Australia.
Now as I said at the outset this agenda, this innovation and science agenda and the very innovative Minister sitting there next to the Cabinet Secretary of course is equally innovative, together with the Education Minister. They understand too that seizing these opportunities is absolutely vital and so the first big agenda, big platform that we laid out after I became Prime Minister was our $1.1 billion National Innovation and Science Agenda. It is a key plank in our National Economic Plan.
It is absolutely critical and you know this is a not a particularly novel insight, at the G20 recently in Hangzhou every national leader was talking about innovation and science. Every single government represented there understood that the key to securing continued strong economic growth was investing in innovation, in science, technology, because without that inevitably you fall behind, you fall to the back of the pack.
It doesn’t matter what your political persuasion is, the reality is if you are not an innovative nation, if you are not an innovation nation, you will be left behind and we are determined that Australia will not be left behind. We recognise that innovation is key. The proof of course in the pudding is in the economy and the proof of our agenda is in our economic performance.
We are enjoying at the moment strong economic growth, 3.3 per cent over the last year. That’s strong economic growth, stronger than any other OECD developed economy. We are enjoying a remarkably successful transition from an economy that had been boosted dramatically by the mining and construction boom.
To be quite clear mining is not going out of date, resources are not going out of date but there was a once in a generation construction boom and that clearly was not going to continue every year for twenty years in to the future.
So this transition was always going to have to have happen and many distinguished economists, experienced analysts expected us to have a pretty hard landing and we haven’t, why is that? It’s because of innovation. It is because of Australian enterprise, it is because of open markets, it’s because of those big free trade agreements that we’ve opened up, Japan, Korea, China and, of course, most notably just in the last week Singapore. All of these creating new markets and opportunities for Australian innovation.
We understand how vitally important universities are in this whole eco-system of innovation. That’s why we have established a $20 billion Medical Research Future Fund, a $500 million Biomedical Translation Fund to support the vital, life-saving medical research that you will be undertaking here with your extraordinary electron microscope.
So what you are doing Vice-Chancellor, Chancellor and all of your colleagues, you are leading the way. You are as you said, not just driving change, not just being driven by change, you are leading it.
I am delighted to be here with so many of my colleagues to congratulate you, to encourage you, to applaud your initiative and wish you every success with this wonderful new facility.
Thank you very much.
Ends