Monash University
Clayton, Victoria
[check against delivery]
It is a pleasure to be here among so many eminent scientists and friends of science to open Monash University’s new Earth Sciences Teaching Laboratory.
Thanks to Professor Richard Larkins AO for extending the invitation, and thanks to all of you for being here.
Monash University
Monash is Australia’s largest university, and certainly one of our best.
It has an international reputation for excellence in a host of disciplines, including engineering, social sciences, technology and biomedicine.
It also has one of the best earth sciences departments in Australia.
The Times Higher Education Supplement ranked it among the world’s top fifty universities in 2008.
It was one of only three universities founded since World War II to achieve that distinction.
Closer to home, Monash has repeatedly won recognition from the Australian Government’s Learning and Teaching Performance Fund, which rewards excellence in undergraduate teaching and learning.
That includes the $1 million the university has used to help meet the cost of this great new facility – the first of its kind in Australia.
Earth sciences
There is no better time to be investing in the development of earth sciences skills.
The global recession may have taken the gloss off the minerals boom, but the resource sector will always be critical to Australia’s economy.
Mining and services to mining accounted for 7 per cent of our GDP and employed 138,000 people in Australia last year.
Our success as a minerals producer depends very much on the availability of well-trained geologists and geophysicists.
It has been estimated that by 2020, an extra 86,000 employees will be needed to meet demand in the mining and resource industries.
This new Earth Sciences Teaching Laboratory may not quite be able to satisfy all of that demand, but I do expect it to add significantly to our stock of accomplished geoscientists.
This is critical given how much we ask of our geologists and geophysicists these days.
We don’t just expect them to work with industry.
We are also relying on them to help us understand how our climate is changing by investigating the deep history of climatic variation.
We are counting on them to give us a better understanding of why natural disasters occur and how we can mitigate their effects.
Importantly, we are asking them to back Australia’s international policy leadership on carbon capture and storage with real-world solutions that will succeed on a large scale.
This is all important work.
It is nation-building work.
It might just be planet-saving work.
And it gives me great pleasure to know that many of the young men and women entrusted to do that work will be trained right here in this building.
Investing in knowledge
The time to start thinking about the skills, the knowledge, and the innovation capacity we will need in the years ahead is right now.
The global recession has taken its toll on Australia, but we are weathering it better than most other developed countries.
We need to capitalise on this advantage.
That’s why the 2009-10 Budget includes an extra $5.7 billion over four years for research, innovation, and university teaching and learning.
We know that R&D is one of the first casualties in any economic downturn.
We know that when times are bad, people stop investing in skills and stop taking chances with new ideas.
We also know what happens to economies when the innovation pipeline shuts down – intellectual capital is destroyed, opportunities are lost, recovery is delayed, and growth is slowed – sometimes for years.
We are determined to counter this cycle by investing in new capacity and systemic reform now, when times are toughest.
The future
This is the message of Powering Ideas, the Government’s ten-year innovation agenda, which was also released on Budget night.
It is a message of hope, but it also a very practical message about laying the foundations for future prosperity.
You do that by investing in public sector research.
You do it by supporting innovative businesses.
And you do that by building cutting-edge facilities like the Monash University Earth Sciences Teaching Laboratory, which it is my very great pleasure to declare open.