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- Toss Gascoigne steps down
- Innovation
- Rigor and relevance
- Federal Budget 2008
- PhD scholarship
- Excellence in Research
- Review of innovation systems
- Australian Research Council
- Three key Ministers
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- ALP Research initiatives
- ALP Arts policy
- Chief Scientist and PMSEIC
- Pity about cluster funding
- RQF Chairs announcement
- RQF 'new opportunities for HASS'
- Job for boundary-spanners
- New President for CHASS
- Post-smokestack industry era
- Measures of quality and impact
- National research priorities
- PMSEIC appointment
Innovation in a post-smokestack industry era
7 August 2006
CHASS today (Monday) released its submission to the Productivity Commission inquiry into science and innovation in Australia.
Professor Malcolm Gillies, President of CHASS (the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences) said the submission outlined a number of ways that innovation could be encouraged.
But he said the central issue was to change a line of thinking that was dismissive of the contribution of the humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS).
"Australia is clinging to an out-dated view of innovation based on the smokestack industries of the last century," Professor Gillies said.
He was sharply critical of a sentence from the Issues Paper published by the Commission:
"The focus is thus on the physical and biological sciences, including engineering, with the social sciences (and the arts and humanities) excluded except to the extent they are relevant to innovation."
"This is old-fashioned thinking. The work of our sector is highly relevant to innovation. It creates new jobs and new industries; and is central to tackling major areas of concern like health, terrorism, cyber crime and the environment."
He said that some of the biggest and most expensive issues facing Australia needed the skills of the HASS and science sectors working together.
"Both obesity and water have a science aspect, but proper solutions rely heavily on modifying human behaviour. We need to change eating habits, and think differently about water use and re-use," he said.
He said the biggest export of the USA today is not automobiles or aviation or armaments, but the entertainment industry. In the UK, the new media industry is about 8% of GDP and growing at 6% each year.
"Changes to production methods, management and operations, or the uptake of IT are innovations which can result from research in all fields but particularly from HASS disciplines," he said.
"For a serviced-based economy such as Australia's, this kind of research impact - as distinct from research which might lead to a new product - is particularly significant."
- For more information, please contact:
- Toss Gascoigne
- Executive Director
- Council of the Humanties, Arts and Social Sciences
- Phone: +61 2 6249 1995
- director@chass.org.au
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