Another report on the industry has been delivered, with the House Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Resources tabling Sovereign, smart, sustainable: Driving advanced manufacturing in Australia on Thursday. The committee began accepting written submissions early this year before holding public hearings. According to the committee’s chair, Labor’s MP for McEwen Rob Mitchell, “the notion…
The new Industry Growth Program – worth $392 million, aimed at assisting startups and SMEs with commercialisation, and announced in the May federal budget – is now open for applications. The IGP provides matched funding through grants worth between $50,000 and $5 million, supporting development of an “innovative product, process or service” that is either…
By Tony Wood, Grattan Institute On Thursday Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen announced a scheme to underwrite the risk of investing in new renewable energy generation and storage. The expansion of the national Capacity Investment Scheme follows a successful pilot study with New South Wales. The government paid A$1.8 billion for just over a gigawatt…
By Anna Skarbek, Climateworks Centre; Anna Malos, Monash University, and Michael Li, Monash University Every bit of warming matters if we want to avoid the worst impacts for climate change, as the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows. In 2020, we released modelling showing how Australia could get to net zero…
The Australian and United Kingdom governments have signed an MoU, agreeing to cooperate on innovation, research and commercialisation of quantum technology, during the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park this week. A joint statement (accessible here) “reaffirms the strong technology relationship” between the pair, supporting joint activities under the Australia-UK Cyber and Critical Technology Partnership…
By Bruce Mountain, Victoria University Last night ABC’s Four Corners investigated the problem-plagued Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro power station, focusing on a bogged tunnelling machine, toxic gas and an unexpected volume of sludge. While these specific problems are new, we have criticised this project since 2019 and outlined six key problems even earlier elsewhere. How…
By Tony Wood, Grattan Institute Australia has a legislated target to reduce greenhouse emissions, a federal government with commitments to increase the share of renewable electricity and reduce power prices, and a globally important economic opportunity at its feet. In the second half of the government’s current term, delivery looks hard across the board. All…
The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) has recommended that the federal government be more ambitious with its decarbonisation goals and commit to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 rather than 2050 The Learned Academy representing almost 900 of Australia’s applied science, technology and engineering professionals announced a new position statement on…
Australia’s expenditure on innovation public and private has fallen for the past decade, and continues to fall under the new federal government. Business expenditure on research and development (BERD) was up 14 per cent over 2021-22, new Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show, though the nation’s total spend on R&D as a proportion of GDP…
A review of the National Freight and Supply Chain Strategy is underway, led by the federal department of infrastructure in collaboration with industry and state and territory governments. According to a statement from federal infrastructure minister Catherine King on Thursday, the strategy is a “holistic, coordinated and multi-modal approach to increase the safety, productivity and…