A focus on generating revenue from high paying international students has led universities down an "unsustainable rabbit hole" leaving them poorly placed to drive the innovation needed to reach net zero emissions, Rob Stokes, NSW Minister for Infrastructure, Cities, and Active Transport, told a forum hosted by University of Wollongong.
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"I think we've trained our universities to pay for their research by importing students rather than by exporting ideas," the former NSW Minister for Education said.
"When successive federal governments have defunded universities over time, the universities have politely gone and found other ways to generate revenue, but, ultimately, they've gone down an unsustainable rabbit hole.
"As a country, we now recognise that if we want innovation and research, we all collectively have a role in paying for it."
Mr Stokes's comments came as part of a forum, co-hosted by the University of Newcastle, Business Illawarra and Business Hunter, investigating where the two industrial powerhouses could collaborate to achieve net zero carbon emissions.
To get to net zero, by 2050 or earlier, Mr Stokes said, governments, universities and industry needed to do better in connecting the ideas grown in universities with the challenges faced by industry.
"We need to understand that it's in all of our interests to drive this innovation, but if we want our universities to be research intensive, then we collectively need to recognise that dividend comes at a cost to all of us."
Despite this, Mr Stokes said that the six cities region - comprising the Illawarra-Shoalhaven, the three cities of Greater Sydney, the Central Coast, and Newcastle and the Hunter - was well positioned to reconnect research and industry, with the region including six top 200 universities.
"For so long, we've been exporting energy, technology and ideas, now is the opportunity to bring those ideas back [and] bridging the gap from ideation to innovation," he said.
As part of the 'Sandstone region' Wollongong and Newcastle stand apart as the locations with the logistic and manufacturing capability to produce the technology needed to decarbonise the economy. Wollongong and Newcastle can lead the energy transition as sentinel cities for the rest of the region, Mr Stokes said.
"Across the Sandstone region of New South Wales, we find that the six cities all have slightly different value propositions, slightly different competitive advantages to offer," Mr Stokes said.
While the Eastern Harbour City of Sydney would be the hub for finance, the Central River City for services, education and health, and the Western Parkland City would focus on the aerotropolis, Wollongong and Newcastle had shared strengths.
"Wollongong and Newcastle have the same point of difference. Now, that should not be the end, that should be the beginning," Mr Stokes said.
Both cities have a history of coal mining and industry and both are connected to significant defence assets, whether the Williamtown Air Force base in Newcastle or naval facilities in the Shoalhaven, Mr Stokes said.
"In many ways, they're similar, but there's an opportunity to compete on the basis of similarities, but also to leverage off those similarities to produce subtle differences."
Mr Stokes highlighted the different, yet complementary role each could play in the production of hydrogen, the fuel tipped to enable hard to decarbonise sectors, such as steel making and freight transport, to get to net zero.
Newcastle's history and infrastructure as an export-focused coal port would, on the one hand, set it up well to export hydrogen made from wind turbines and solar farms to international markets. Wollongong, on the other hand, with its heritage of producing coking coal for the Port Kembla steelworks would be ideally suited to producing hydrogen for domestic consumption, whether in the steelworks or the transport sector.
Panellists highlighted work that was already being done to connect research with commercial applications, from hydrogen disruptor Hysata, located at the University of Wollongong's Innovation Campus, or the 250 PhD students at the University of Newcastle funded by industry to solve pressing problems.
However, thorny issues remain. John Nowlan, chief executive of Australian Steel Products, BlueScope, said that in addition to rewiring the Port Kembla blast furnaces to support the use of hydrogen, alternative processes to turn Australian iron ore into a material adaptable to a very different process of steelmaking still needed to be resolved, something the industrial giant was exploring in an Memorandum of Understanding with Rio Tinto.
Ensuring that change has a social licence as well will continue to confront decision makers in at times counter-intuitive ways, highlighted Professor Roberta Ryan, director of the Institute for Regional Futures at the University of Newcastle.
In Professor Ryan's research, those on higher salaries were much more likely to agree that climate change was having a significant impact, while at the same time those in resource dependent communities were the most optimistic about the opportunities that come with a transition to low carbon economies.
"Everybody agrees that governments and universities need to take a leading role in developing these transition plans, and that these opportunities need to be driven from the aspirations of these communities," she said.
Finally, not squandering the lead that Australia already has in renewable energy, particularly the widespread rollout of cheap solar energy, would enable regions like the Illawarra and the Hunter to lead the energy transition, Dr Saul Griffith, founder of Rewiring Australia, said.
"We need to install 100 million machines by 2035 in the Australian domestic economy, to get to zero emissions, that's the batteries, cars, solar, etcetera," he said.
"Those 100 million machines are going to be installed by a lot of kids and we need to say, look, 'There is a great job, and you're going to be saving Australia and critical to his future.'"
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