CRC boost a success for Australian innovation

Cooperative Research Centres were established in Australia in 1990 to enhance Australia’s economic growth through an injection of Commonwealth research funding. CEO Prof Tony Peacock shows how important they are to Australia’s global innovation success.

Australia’s unique Cooperative Research Centres Program received a boost recently, with the Innovation Minister announcing that six CRCs had been successful in the 14th funding round of the program.

Most observers thought a good result would be if four or five of the shortlisted 10 proposals received a funding offer, so six is a great result. Four continuing CRCs were funded along with two new centres.

The continuing centres are Plant Biosecurity CRC, Invasive Animals CRC, Auto CRC and Polymers CRC. The two new centres are the Low Carbon Living CRC and the Water Sensitive Cities CRC. The CRC Association was also very pleased to see that each centre received the full amount they requested, or fairly close to it. Industry end-users contribute strongly to CRCs and their ability to carry out their business plans are compromised by arbitrary cuts to proposals, so these CRCs have the tools they asked for and can get on with the job.

Cooperative Research Centres are a small but important part of Australia’s Innovation System. We remain at the low end of OECD countries when it comes to collaboration. We also have a very low proportion of PhD-trained researchers working in industry compared with other industrialised countries – most of our PhD-trained people are in academia. Because of that CRCs play an important role in encouraging collaboration between industry end-users and academic researchers.

A CRC enables them to all be in the same boat, but the end-users are the ones with their hands on the tiller. This provides a good mix of ideas and direction that result in outcomes.

For example, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner recently visited Australia and 4% of it will be made here because of the unique capacities drawn together in the Advanced Composites CRC. Soft contact lens, the Meat Standards Grading system whereby consumers purchase meat based on quality, "Tooth Mousse" that restores lost calcium to teeth and is part of a range of oral health products selling more than $300 million per annum, and the energy inverters made by Nissan Australia for the world’s first mass-produced electric vehicle are a few other examples of what happens when good researchers get together with industry in a CRC.

The CRC Program has been under massive pressure over the past four years with the total budget falling. Next year we will have only 36 CRCs in the country from 70 only a few years ago. The CRC Association has been promoting to the Federal Government that CRCs are an excellent model for facing up to major challenges because they provide the right mix of people and they are at an appropriate scale and timeframe.

Minister Carr’s announcement of six Centres is a good endorsement of CRCs and we hope it marks a turnaround in the fortunes of the program.

Professor Tony Peacock is the Chief Executive of the Cooperative Research Centres Association. Tony was the Chief Executive of the Invasive Animals CRC from 2005 and the Pest Animal Control CRC from 2001. He was Managing Director of the Pig R&D Corporation from 1996-2001. Tony is a passionate advocate for applied research and was the 2010 winner of the Australian Government Eureka Prize for Promoting the Public Understanding of Science.