Latham Commits Labor to Lifting Australia's Investment in R&D... But Where's the Detail? (July 30, 2004)

     The leader of the Labor opposition, Mark Latham yesterday addressed the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union (AMWU). Four  paragraphs in his speech seem to have travelled beneath media attention:

Under the last Labor Government, R&D investment grew by 10 percent per year for a decade. The Howard Government has neglected R&D and venture capital, so that the rate of investment has now fallen below its 1996 level.

 

Most companies in Australia spend more on their electricity bills than they do on research and development.

 

Few collaborate with the public research institutions and, quite frankly, this is just unacceptable in an advanced industrial economy. This is why Labor is committed to meeting OECD levels of research investment by the year 2015.

 

Currently we are just two-thirds of the OECD average. We’ve got to lift up and Labor’s plan is to lift up to the OECD level by 2015. But, of course, more needs to be done to develop a knowledge-based and modern manufacturing industry.

An email to TFW this morning asks, "[for starters] a bit of detail on strategy might be nice especially apropos industry R&D. What changes in tax concessions does Latham propose, will he maintain the thrust of current commercialisation approaches? Which OECD average does he have in mind 2003 or 2015?"

According to the chart released on July 13 by the Group of Eight the current OECD weighted average is 2.39% while that proposed at the Lisbon Conference is 2.82% for 2010-11, (click thumbnail).

So far as we know no targets have been set by the OECD or the EU for 2015 as regards gross expenditure for research and development as a percentage of GDP ((GERD/GDP)100).

On the other hand both the Prime Minister, John Howard, and his Minister for Science, Peter McGauran, have indicated that in their opinion setting targets for Australia regarding GERD or GERD/GDP are foolish.