Australian Academy of Sciences
Acton, ACT
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It is a pleasure to be launching the Australian National Fabrication Facility in the company of so many innovation leaders from our universities, from industry, and from the facility itself.
We expect this new venture to be a catalyst for global collaboration, so I’m especially pleased to welcome our international guests:
• Peter Elder
First Secretary of the British High Commission.
• Inga Heuser
First Secretary of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany.
• Katina Novkova
Chargé d’Affaires of the Embassy of the Republic of Bulgaria.
• Nicola Sasanelli
Attaché for Science of the Embassy of Italy.
• and Dr Jean-François Desvignes-Hicks
Deputy Director of the Forum for European-Australian Science and Technology Cooperation.
The facility
The Australian National Fabrication Facility is a major addition to our nanotechnology and micro-fabrication research capability.
Micro- and nanofabrication are building-block technologies.
They promise us:
• clean, affordable water through nano-membrane filtration;
• new modes of drug delivery for better health care;
• and new energy storage technologies that will make large-scale solar and wind power a practical option.
Nanotechnologies are now finding their way into many industries – manufacturing, construction, electronics, ICT, pharmaceuticals and more.
Global investment in nanotechnology R&D is growing at around 14 per cent a year.
Australia has to start matching that investment if we want to remain competitive.
The Australian National Fabrication Facility will give our researchers and industries the tools they need to keep Australia in the game.
Collaboration
Innovation is no longer the province of the lone inventor.
It no longer occurs within single institutions or disciplines.
Innovation is open and pervasive.
It depends on our ability to collaborate and make connections.
A core of research expertise has been patiently built up over many years in each of the facility’s seven nodes.
Australia can now capitalise on that expertise.
This is very much in keeping with the role we want universities to play in the national innovation system:
• generating knowledge through research;
• transmitting knowledge through teaching;
• and diffusing knowledge through engagement with industry and the community.
In fact, up to half the researchers using this facility are expected to be industry-based.
Funding
But it isn’t just universities and industry we want to see working together.
It’s also important that Australian governments collaborate to achieve our shared national goals.
This facility shows it can be done.
The Commonwealth has contributed $41 million to it through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy and another $10 million through CSIRO.
The governments of Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia have contributed $25 million.
And the twelve universities involved in the facility’s seven nodes have contributed $14 million more.
It is dangerous to single people out, but it would be unfair not to mention the leadership shown by the Victorian Government, which contributed over $15 million to the node in that state, to be known as the Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication.
This state-of-the-art centre – adjacent to the Australian Synchrotron – will be the jewel in the Australian National Fabrication
Facility’s crown.
Policy
Last month, I released the innovation review report, Venturous Australia.
It recommends creating a successor to the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy, with a budget of $150 to $200 million a year for ten years.
It also recommends establishing a National Research Infrastructure Committee to provide strategic advice.
The Australian Government is considering these recommendations as it prepares its response to the review.
In the meantime, I have just released a new Strategic Roadmap for Australian Research Infrastructure.
It presents a fresh view of where investments should be made over the next five to ten years.
In particular, it recommends building on the capabilities provided by this facility with additional infrastructure to support industrial-scale and cross-disciplinary fabrication projects.
The future
The Australian National Fabrication Facility is a credit to everyone involved.
Creating capacity of this magnitude requires imagination, foresight, long-term investment, strategic leadership and a willingness to try new things.
The facility will dramatically increase Australia’s ability:
• to undertake world-class research in micro- and nanofabrication;
• to transfer specialist knowledge to industry;
• and to seize new economic opportunities.
It shows just how much we can accomplish when we think strategically and act collaboratively, and I’m delighted to be launching it today.