- Electrical fingerprint technology helps with energy savings
- Good news for component suppliers on home entertainment front
- A genuinely believable CGI actor? It won’t be long
- Who will be the winner in the next computing revolution?
To see the phenomenal potential of Australian electronics, you have to look overseas. That is one of the great privileges of my office.
In the past few months alone, I have met children in New Delhi whose lives were remade by Cochlear implants. I have seen the intense interest amongst OECD delegates in the technologies that support the NBN. I have showcased breakthrough semiconductors that could boost our bid for the Square Kilometre Array, one of the most ambitious global astronomy projects of our time.
The Australian electronics industry is aiming for excellence, and the world is paying attention. It is time this country did the same.
The challenges for manufacturers in Australia today are well-known.
From my perspective, that’s no excuse to set our sights on mediocrity. Too many commentators seem ashamed to back ambition – in clean technology, in the digital economy, and in every high-tech sector reliant on high-calibre electronics. They are denying a fact nailed home by every firm profiled in this publication. We can win the innovation race – and we should expect nothing less.
Winners pick themselves. The latest national Innovation Systems Report confirms it. Firms which choose to innovate are twice as likely to report increases in productivity, and up to four times as likely to boost their employment. They are also 41 per cent more likely to report higher profits.
Innovation is the key to a globally competitive electronics sector, and that sector can be the catalyst for a new Australia.
This is our chance to re-tool our industries, to up-grade our infrastructure, to build a stronger nation on a new type of manufacturing.
Our partnership with the electronics community must underpin that work, crossing the full spectrum of the innovation chain. This year alone, the Government will invest more than $9 billion on science, research and innovation.
I am particularly proud of the efforts we have made to build the national research infrastructure backbone. This year, we launched the first of three supercomputers in the $80 million Pawsey Project, at Murdoch University. That machine alone ranks in the global top one hundred. When combined with the power of the two supercomputers we have yet to launch, it will show the world we are ready to support the massive processing demands of the Square Kilometre Array – which will generate more than 5 million million million bytes of information every day.
The Government is also working closely with industry to unlock access to the knowledge, capital and infrastructure for innovation. After two years of consultation and planning, the Parliament has now passed Australia’s first R&D Tax Credit for enterprising firms. The Credit is a more generous and flexible mechanism than the existing Concession, and will open the door to many start-ups and smaller firms in the electronics sector. If they want to invest in genuine R&D, then this Government will back their ambition.
The Credit will complement the support we open up through targeted grants and capability development programs. Through Commercialisation Australia, for example, we have invested $1.4 million in Nitero’s ultra-low power 60GHz chipset. The technology is based on more than five years of research and development by National ICT Australia, and this grant will help get it to market.
Enterprise Connect is another vital support for the electronics industry. Through its Technology Partnerships Equipment Register, firms can access highly specialised equipment and technology from other businesses that have spare capacity. It is a cost-effective solution to an otherwise intractable problem – and that is the spirit of the innovation agenda.
This is how we will transform this nation, firm by firm, region by region, for the twenty-first century.
I thank you for leading the way.