Dr. Shane Huntington

It is palpable.

It is everywhere.

There is a change in the attitudes.

Many of them seem a bit beaten.

And so you've got people who've trained their entire life for this and then being told, well, you know what?

The grant you need to continue to work after Christmas has a 10% success rate.

Have a nice day.

One of the things a lot of people aren't aware of is just recently a report came out called the CERD report.

And this was entitled Ambitious Australia.

And it's a redesign, if you will, a recommendation for a redesign of the R&D system in Australia.

Very prominent people put this report together.

What very few people will realise is that back in 2008, there was a very similar report also delivered to government.

That one was called Venturous Australia.

So we've gone from Venturous Australia to now we have Ambitious Australia, 16 years apart.

And the number one recommendation in both of these reports

was to establish a National Innovation Council.

So we told government to do this 16 years ago in 2008, and now we've just told them to do it again.

And we're wondering what will be different.

Do we fast forward 16 years and have a new one called Desperate Australia?

Or are we going to listen this time and realise that we are not cutting it?