Shadow Minister for Education, Senator Sarah Henderson, has welcomed the passing of legislation today to establish the Australia’s Economic Accelerator Program, a game changing $1.6 billion investment in the commercialisation of university research.
“A key initiative of the former Coalition government, the Economic Accelerator program will drive the translation and commercialisation of research to ensure that Australian universities can take more of their inventions and innovations to market,” Senator Henderson said.
The Economic Accelerator initiative followed a review which found that while Australian universities undertake world-leading research and publish more than 100,000 academic papers, too often this did not result in tangible outcomes.
“The Coalition is determined to support a new wave of commercial innovations in the same way that Australian research delivered the electronic pacemaker, penicillin, the black box flight recorder, Wi-Fi and cochlear implants,” Senator Henderson said.
“The Economic Accelerator program will help bridge the ‘valley of death’ when early stage research is often not progressed because of the risk and uncertainty of commercial returns.”
This $1.6 billion investment over 10 years is part of the Coalition’s $2.2 billion University Research Commercialisation Package, supported by the government, about which the Business Council of Australia said “…will significantly improve Australia’s ability to commercialise our best ideas and innovations, scaling them up to create exciting new industries, new exports and new highly skilled jobs for Australians.”
For more detail, see Senator Henderson’s second reading speech on the bill.