The Hon Richard Marles MP
Parliamentary Secretary for Innovation and Industry
Wednesday, 28 October - Canberra
Address at Parliament House, Main Committee Room
HASS on the Hill 2009

Thank you for your introduction, Professor Rosenman.

First, I pay my respects to the traditional custodians of the land we are meeting on. I acknowledge and respect their continuing culture, and the contribution they make to the life of this region.

Let me say that I am pleased to join this august gathering and to welcome you to Parliament House this morning.

I'd like to also acknowledge the presence today of:

• Professor Ross Homel AO, Vice President of CHASS from Griffith University
• Professor Anthony Cahalan, President of the Australasian Council of the Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, of Charles Sturt University
• Professor Trevor Gale, Director of Student Equity in Higher Education, Hawke Research Institute from the University of South Australia
• ARC Laureate Fellow Professor Lesley Head from University of Wollongong.

This event, the third HASS on the Hill, has become a well-recognised event on the Parliamentary calendar.

A testament to its success is the fact that more than 100 people have registered to take part this year and there is a strong line up of sponsors to support it.

I know that an important part of HASS on the Hill is the opportunity it gives for direct contact with MPs, Senators and Ministers.

My colleagues always welcome this kind of direct engagement and I'm sure you, and they, are in for a busy and challenging day.

Your Council is well established on the national scene.

Chass plays a critical role as an advocate for the humanities, social sciences and creative arts.

Your membership extends well beyond the universities and the traditional academy, taking in scholars and researchers and creative arts practitioners in a wide range of fields.

Your presence here today is a reminder to us all, not just that CHASS is a useful and authoritative source of advice and ideas on the humanities, creative arts and social sciences but also that these disciplines provide us with essential life tools.

Organisations like CHASS become more important as we realise the magnitude and complexity of the changes and challenges before us.

Issues like climate change affect the whole country and the whole of society. But they also affect individuals.

To meet the challenges they pose, we first need a better understanding of our environment, how we interact with it, how we talk about it and how we deal with it.

The humanities, creative arts and social sciences help us gain these understandings - from our past, our norms and cultural practices and of our region and the rest of the world.

This is only one example - but a good one - of the importance of the humanities, creative arts and social sciences.

Organisations like CHASS are important, also, because of our tendency to undervalue thoughtful, creative discussion and the need to look at a problem from a fresh perspective.

How often have we seen that slightly different angle help us reach the light switch that turns on the glow of a good idea?

Australia has a long, proud and vibrant creative arts history: in design, in dance, in literature, in music, in theatre, and in film and television.

Consider Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, Barry Humphries … are all international names.

The same goes for scholars and researchers in the sciences, social sciences and humanities too.

Sadly, some of our best and brightest are better known overseas than they are at home.

Sometimes it takes a Booker Prize, a Field Medal, or even a Nobel Prize before our stars get the recognition they deserve. Among the public, who knew of Elizabeth Blackburn before she was awarded the Nobel Prize.

To counter this, the Australian Government has established a range of new initiatives to bring the best and brightest minds to Australia - in every field.

For example, in 2008 my colleague the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research announced the prestigious Australian Laureate Fellowships.

These fellowships attract outstanding researchers of international repute.

The first fellowships were awarded in June this year, and one of them is with us today - Professor Lesley Head.

Professor Head's award is very important in the context of my remarks today, and what the Australian Government is striving for.

The Australian Laureate Fellowships are just one new initiative.

In the 2009-10 Budget the Government announced a suite of reforms to Australian higher education, research and innovation.

Powering Ideas is the Government's white paper on innovation and set out a ten year vision for a national innovation system in 2020.

Powering Ideas is a multi-fronted approach to shaping the innovation system that aims to have:

• Universities and research organisations which can attract the best and brightest minds
• Innovation in businesses of all sizes and in all sectors - including the creative industries

Powering Ideas has clear goals:

• increasing the number of Australian research groups performing at world-class levels
• boosting international research collaboration
• increasing the number of students completing higher degrees by research, and
• doubling the level of collaboration between Australian businesses, universities and publicly-funded research agencies.

These reforms are underpinned by significant additional investment.

The 2009-10 Budget provided a $3.1 billion boost, in fact a 25 per cent increase, in funding for Australian research over the next four years.

That's the biggest such increase on record.

And we're not just playing favourites here.

All of this is relevant to the humanities, creative arts and social sciences.

The Australian Government wants to support the best research in all fields.

We want to boost international collaboration in all fields.

We want to increase the number of Australians with PhDs - in all fields.

And we want greater collaboration between universities, businesses, industries and the wider community in all fields.

There are opportunities here for the humanities, creative arts and social sciences like never before.

On Monday the Minister announced some of the major ARC grant outcomes for 2009.

The humanities, social sciences and creative arts did well out of the most recent funding round.

In the grant Discovery-Projects program the success rate for applications to the humanities and creative arts discipline panel was 24.9 per cent - higher than the rate for other panels.

More than $45 million in grants went to cutting edge projects, for example:

• on the impact of Government policies in regional and remote areas
• on the history of Australian photography
• on Indonesia's role in carbon emissions reduction, and
• on the ancestry of Homo floresiensis - the 'hobbits' of the island of Flores.

And more than $4 million was awarded to the humanities and creative arts discipline via the Linkage-Projects program, for research into a wide range of projects, including teaching the Chinese language, improving financial regulation, and evaluating science communication activities.

The Social, Behavioural and Economic Sciences discipline stream also featured some interesting projects.

What struck me about many of this year's successes - in both streams - was that they cross traditional disciplinary boundaries - not just within the social sciences and humanities but between these fields and the natural and physical sciences.

This is exactly the kind of creative, cross-disciplinary collaborative research the Australian Government wants to encourage.

In this context I would just like to return to the Australian Laureate Fellowship awarded to Professor Head.

The Australian Government is determined to drive a new and vibrant national innovation system, one that embraces collaboration on all fronts.

We envisage striving for an innovation system that works between researchers and industry, within Australia but also makes effective use of opportunities presented by global partnerships, and, importantly, one that crosses traditional divides between disciplines.

I said earlier that Professor Head is a good example of what we are striving for.

Her focus on long term changes in the Australian landscape and the relationship between Australia's peoples and this changing environment unites the sciences and social sciences.

Her work is a wonderful example of breaking down traditional silos and of the kind of cross-disciplinary research we need if Australia is to face the challenges of the future.

It reminds us that big problems like climate change have small, often local, impacts on people and communities, but that to tackle these problems effectively requires the expertise of researchers in a wide range of disciplines.

I say again there are opportunities like never before for the humanities, social sciences and creative arts to be involved in answering the great challenges of our time - the challenge for you is to get involved.

 

The Hon Richard Marles MP
Parliamentary Secretary for Innovation and Industry