124 Pages. 20 Recommendations.
Australia's Innovation Future.

🏛️ Create a National Innovation Council — Commonwealth Cabinet establish a single National Innovation Council (for example by reforming Industry Innovation and Science Australia) chaired by an eminent Australian, supported by a Statutory Officer, to oversee Commonwealth RD&I funding and reporting directly to the Prime Minister and the Minister for Industry and Innovation / Science.

🏗️ Consolidate into 6 National Innovation Pillars — Consolidate national RD&I efforts into 6 National Innovation Pillars: (1) Health and medical; (2) Agriculture and food; (3) Defence; (4) Environment and energy; (5) Resources; (6) Technology; each anchored by a long-term and aspirational national goal to guide prioritisation, coordination and strategic focus.

📋 Strategy Advisory Councils per Pillar — Establish a National Strategy Advisory Council (NSAC) for each National Innovation Pillar, reporting to portfolio Ministers. NSACs should collaborate with the National Innovation Council and relevant Commonwealth departments to set up to 3 subgoals for each pillar, to focus RD&I activities on high-risk, high-impact challenges.

🚀 National Strategic Initiatives (NSIs) — Public RD&I investment should be consolidated and concentrated to achieve subgoals through National Strategic Initiatives (NSIs) that engage all tiers of government, startups, small to medium enterprises (SMEs), large businesses, investors, and researchers in high-risk, high-impact challenges.

🔑 Reverse the decline in research funding — Protect and support foundational research by reversing the decline in competitive grants, building investment in the main competitive grant schemes to globally competitive funding levels, and applying appropriate indexation.

💵 Fix indirect cost support — Strengthen indirect cost support by reversing recent declines in support rates and tasking the National Innovation Council and the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC) to implement a mechanism to determine the full cost of delivering high-quality research.

⚖️ Balance grants across Pillars — The ARC and NHMRC competitive grants programs should balance support directed to the National Innovation Pillars while preserving support for independent research that drives discovery across a broad range of STEM and HASS disciplines.

🎓 Let universities specialise — Allow universities to achieve research specialisation by reforming registration requirements to reduce the condition for research breadth and enable each to build scale in areas of their competitive and comparative advantage.

🏗️ Sustain research infrastructure — Governments commit ongoing funding to ensure sustainability of research infrastructure.

🔧 NIC oversees infrastructure — The National Innovation Council be responsible for the oversight, planning and coordination of national research infrastructure.

⚡ Rapid prototyping & frontier research — The National Innovation Council to take on a charter for extending research infrastructure capabilities to include rapid prototyping to accelerate frontier research and foster collaboration with emerging industries.

🖥️ State-of-the-art GPU & HPC — The National Innovation Council to ensure state of the art capability in high-performance computing and graphics processing unit (GPU) resources to support RD&I activities.

📝 Simplify the R&D Tax Incentive — Reform the R&D Tax Incentive to simplify administration and focus the scheme for greater impact.

🌱 Premium RDTI for startups — Incentivise startups through a premium RDTI segment providing streamlined access to improve benefits for high-potential firms.

📈 RDTI for SME growth — Leverage the RDTI to incentivise SME growth and ambition, and increase the thresholds for access and ongoing support.

🏢 RDTI for corporates & multinationals — Increase RDTI incentives for corporates and multi-national corporations to undertake local RD&I activities and to drive partnerships, procurement, investment and M&A.

🤝 Funding for RDTI-ineligible businesses — Establish a funding mechanism that enables existing businesses that are ineligible for the RDTI scheme to kick-start their RD&I efforts by accessing Australian research capability in universities, publicly funded research agencies (PFRAs) and innovation intensive corporations.

🏭 Production tax credit for advanced manufacturing — The Australian Government provide a production tax credit or subsidy for advanced manufacturing resulting from RD&I activities to remain in Australia.

👼 Unlock angel investment — Expand the incentives for angel investors to unlock more capital including by reforming ESIC and crowd sourced funding schemes and changing 'sophisticated investor' requirements.

📊 Expand ESVCLP for VC scale — Simplify and expand ESVCLP incentives to unlock more capital and support the venture capital industry to scale.

🏦 Reform super to invest in RD&I — Reform superannuation policy settings under ASIC Regulatory Guide 97 (RG97) and performance tests, and require superfunds to enable members to elect to invest in Australian high growth RD&I firms.

🏗️ Fund-of-funds for long-term investment — Support the establishment of fund-of-funds (FOF) to grow long-term investment, across different stages, including by providing fee relief for FOF investors and focusing sovereign funds where appropriate.

🚪 Fix exit pathways — IPOs & M&A — Incentivise investment in Australian innovation by ensuring Australian regulatory environments that impact on the exit pathways for RD&I firms, particularly IPOs and M&A, are globally competitive and balance regulatory protections against the need for liquidity to support RD&I businesses.

🎓 Industry-focused research training — Universities, in partnership with industry, be supported to design and deliver inclusive research training programs with a strong industry focus. Universities be encouraged to deliver entrepreneurial research training programs.

💰 Lift PhD stipends & make scholarships tax-free — Increase the attractiveness of PhD programs for Australian students by lifting the stipend rates in fields aligned with the National Innovation Pillars and making part-time research scholarships tax free.

🧑‍💼 Skills as part of investment framework — The National Innovation Council and the NSACs include skills development as a key element of the investment framework for the pillars. Investment in the NSIs should include a requirement to support diverse and inclusive talent and skills development, attraction and mobility.

🌏 RD&I workforce strategy — The National Innovation Council, in consultation with industry and unions, devise an RD&I workforce strategy to leverage funding, migration and education systems to develop, retain and attract the talent Australia needs to make the innovation cycle work.

🤝 Prioritise First Nations in RD&I — The National Innovation Council prioritise First Nations RD&I activities including building the number of First Nations entrepreneurs across the economy.

🛒 Prioritise Australian R&D procurement — Prioritise procurement of Australian RD&I and implement 'if not, why not' as a core tenet of procurement policies. National Cabinet should set goals for procurement outcomes and require public reporting against those goals.

💸 Competitive corporate tax for RD&I — Future tax reform should prioritise a competitive effective corporate tax rate for RD&I companies to make Australia an attractive location for investment and innovative business activity.

⚙️ Simplify grants, embrace risk — Increase the impact of the national RD&I investment by focusing on the effectiveness of grants and funding processes through simplification, standardisation and improved technologies, accompanied by a proportionate appetite for risk.

🔗 Align PFRAs & RDCs with Pillars — Ensure Australia's 16 PFRAs and investment in the 15 RDCs align appropriately with National Innovation Pillars, and consolidate where possible.

🧪 Position CSIRO as core Pillar contributor — CSIRO should be positioned as a core contributor to the pillars, supported by sustainable and targeted funding to deliver this role effectively.

📊 Outcome-focused SMART metrics — The National Innovation Council should develop an outcome focused RD&I Performance Framework with SMART metrics (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timebound) to assess impact and quality at program and system levels.

📣 National narrative for RD&I — The Australian Government create a national narrative that persistently demonstrates the benefits and gains of RD&I to the community here and abroad, leveraging the pillars and this reform package to drive investment and opportunity for Australian innovators.