The federal government is set to "unleash" innovation and science with a new industry agenda to be announced at the end of 2015.
New Innovation Minister Christopher Pyne joined Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at an 'innovation roundtable' at Western Sydney University on Friday, speaking with representatives from the CSIRO, universities and big and small business.
Mr Pyne said the government was keen to learn from those in the know.
"The government wants to listen, not to assume it knows every answer before everyone else does," Mr Pyne said.
"We'll always have the bedrock of agriculture and mining and manufacturing but innovation, creative industries, start-ups, new technologies, this is the new economy and Australia has the intellectual capacity to make the most of that.
"Towards the end of the year, we'll announce an agenda around innovation and science which I think will unleash and commercialise those ideas, and enable people to feel like they can take risk."
In his leadership speech in September, Mr Turnbull said Australia had the potential to be at the vanguard of the new economy.
He re-emphasised that ethos on Friday, saying technological disruption was something to be embraced.
"If we are going to remain, as we must, a high wage, generous social welfare net economy, a prosperous economy, then we have to be more competitive, more productive, more innovative," he said.
"The opportunities, whether they are given by technology or by the enormous opportunities from a growing global economy, are all there.
"Our ability to take advantage of them is limited only by our own imagination."
Share
