Back Australia: We either innovate, or we will stagnate … it’s that simple

In that future our mineral deposits are likely to diminish in value as the major world powers battle over scarce resources such as critical minerals, and technological breakthroughs rearrange manufacturing and energy processing.

Australia therefore needs to change its priorities. Weighed down by public debt, a decade of forecast deficits and a lack of vision, Australia needs to accelerate the expansion of our knowledge-based economy.

There is a desperate need to use Australian innovative brain power now to grow the economy and safeguard our standard of living by commercialising our key research. Building a large knowledge economy, however, takes time, money and collaboration.

Let’s first deal with the ugly realities of Australia’s position in the world, and then the positives.

Australia is a middle-ranked nation with a population of only 27 million, located some distance from the world’s current major markets. Federal governments, of all political persuasions, think short-term, weighed down by three-year election terms.

Social media has turned politics into a circus sideshow where managing the 24-hour media cycle is more important than long-term policy thinking. The legislative requirements and red tape burdening our companies and superannuation funds makes our corporate leaders risk averse. The blunt reality is that outside our superannuation funds, Australia is capital-poor, and we lose too many of our brilliant ideas and research overseas before those ideas have a chance of being commercialised at home.

Now the positives; Australia is on the doorstep of Southeast Asia, which will see rapid growth both in population and economic activity between now and 2050. That provides enormous opportunity for Australian trade and investment. Equally important, we have some of the best research institutions, business leaders and thinkers in the world. We need to corral our visionary thinkers with industry leaders and government and plan a future strategy of where Australia should be in 2050.

The federal government has had an economic reform summit; what we really need now is an innovation summit in Canberra where nothing is off the table. The Prime Minister and Treasurer should convene a meeting of Australia’s best and brightest from our research institutions and universities with the hard-headed leaders from industries to determine a vision for Australia by 2050.

A key part of that strategy needs to focus on attracting research investment partners in medical science, mining services, future energy, agriculture, AI, IT, environmental management, education, the arts, transport management and our other service industries.

Australia now needs to think long-term and smart. No one should think we lack the brain power. Last week the University of Queensland celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, one of the major research institutions established under my government’s Smart State strategy. The results speak for themselves.

Professor Kate Schroder from IMB studies chronic inflammatory diseases that have no cure or effective treatment. As head of IMB’s Inflammasome Laboratory, she is the co-inventor on patents for small molecule inhibitors of a protein complex that drives inflammation.

This has enormous implications for the treatment of debilitating conditions such as cardiovascular disease and arthritis, and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and motor neurone disease. The research is currently under commercialisation by Inflazome, founded by IMB group leader Professor Matthew Cooper and acquired by Roche in a landmark deal that is one of the largest in Australian and Irish biotech history. There has been more than $3bn invested in IMB intellectual property, resulting in 20 spin-out companies, as well as global collaborations and industry partnerships.

At the IMB, there have been kidneys grown in a dish, plants that function as medicines, and algae examined for its role in regenerative medicine, cell growth and solar-driven biotechnologies. Deadly spider venom has been developed to treat heart attacks, and the invasive march of the cane toad has been reduced with pheromone lures that disrupt its breeding cycle. There has been a vital progression in the understanding of inflammation, and a bee-friendly pesticide on national shelves.

By harnessing the power of ­nature to cure disease, many researchers have successfully commercialised their discoveries. The life-changing power of scientific research not only saves and prolongs lives, it also drives economic activity. The IMB is only one of Australia’s research institutes. I plead guilty to a conflict of interest. I am currently the chair of Brandon BioCatalyst, a collaboration of more than 50 Australian and New Zealand medical research institutes, hospitals and universities, and I know that investing in Australian brain power is an economic driver. Brandon Capital is now Australia’s largest investor in medical science and has more than $1.3bn under management, with offices in Melbourne, Sydney, San Francisco and London. Brandon BioCatalyst’s collaboration model needs to be repeated in other industry sectors.

Any plan for Australia’s future that does not include a strong focus on encouraging research and innovation is just words without meaning. Too often Australia’s public discourse drowns in the noise of the latest shallow meaningless debate about nothing and misses the big picture.

That picture is very clear; we ­either innovate or stagnate. It is that simple. The rest of the noise is just that: noise.

Peter Beattie is a former premier of Queensland and the chair of Brandon BioCatalyst.

This article first appeared in The Australian as Back Australia: We either innovate, or we will stagnate … it’s that simple