Guy Healy | July 30, 2008
TOMORROW is C-day in Canberra, when the Government will take delivery of Terry Cutler's anxiously anticipated innovation review, and one of the key questions universities hope it addresses is new mechanisms to drive increased private investment in their research.
Dr Cutler has a specific reference to consider how well the 125 per cent research and development tax concession is working "and how it might be made to work better".In a little-noticed speech to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia in April, Innovation Minister Kim Carr said "one option under consideration was a premium concession for public-private research collaboration".
When asked about the option yesterday, Senator Carr's spokeswoman said Dr Cutler would deliver the green paper tomorrow, and the minister couldn't comment.
However, she said the minister's earlier comments remained "live" and "on the table".
Senator Carr's comments were echoed in the Australian Technology Network of universities' submission to the Cutler paper.
ATN director Vicki Thomson told the HES yesterday that it would support the implementation of a premium R&D tax concession of 175 per cent for industries that engaged in R&D with universities and publicly funded research agencies.
David Henderson, managing director of the University of Queensland's research commercialisation arm, UniQuest, said such a concession would be welcome because "it removes some of the uncertainty about whether you have a grant (for university start-ups)".
Mr Henderson's parent university recently declared more than $50 million in royalties, mainly from anti-cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil.
Universities are also expecting a scheme to help make up shortfalls the ATN estimates at many hundreds of millions of dollars that universities bear when they cross-subsidise the real costs of their successful Australian Research Council and National Health and Medical Research Council grants.
The Innovative Research Universities Australia group has called for the full cost funding of Australian Competitive Grants to be phased in over five years to help ensure success rates don't fall below a minimum of 20 per cent in any grant scheme.
Universities will be looking to see whether Dr Cutler recommends measures in line with Senator Carr's public statements that Australia needs "to double its R&D effort, public and private, in this country if we're to keep pace with our competitors".