The Queensland State budget allocated $180 million to get industry, universities and government ‘collaborating to create new jobs and drive investment in knowledge-based sectors of the state’s economy’.
Dr Chris Salisbury writes in The Conversation (15.7.15) that the new program ‘noticeably steers clear of committing to further investment in facilities and other such blunt policy levers’. ‘Advance Queensland picks iup where Bligh’s later focus on people, ideas and products left off. $50 million to attract and retain world-class research talent and fund increased science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programs in schools’.
Universities and research institutions will ‘welcome the clear signal this program sends that the state government is willing to visibly back the research and innovation sectors. Such a move picks up some of the slack left by the federal government’s proposed backing away from research and infrastructure spending, amid continued uncertainty over higher education funding’.