National Enabling Technologies Strategy: Using technology for a better future 

Addressing global problems

The Strategy will support research and engagement in international activities that will help increase Government, industry and community understanding of the potential for enabling technologies to address major global and national problems, and to understand and help resolve potential impediments to their uptake.

The National Enabling Technologies Strategy is currently supporting the following activities to assess how enabling technologies can address these problems. These include:

• A study undertaken with the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) and the Bureau of Regional Sciences (BRS) to assess the role of enabling technologies in dealing with Australia’s food security issues.
• Two research scoping studies to identify the opportunity for Australian biomass based value chains which aim to:
  1. investigate the technical and financial feasibility of developing integrated biorefineries based on tropical and temperate feedstocks in Australia; and
  2. address the limited understanding amongst local industry, the Australian Government and the research community of the relevance of existing capabilities and infrastructure; or the existing barriers to establishing biobased value chains, based on differing feedstocks from tropical and temperate Australian agricultural regions.

The NETS Expert Forum will also consider the potential risks and opportunities arising out of emerging technologies.

Industry uptake

Increasing the level of industry’s understanding of enabling technologies and their applications will strongly contribute to the increased use of these technologies, and the benefits to Australia that may come from their adoption. The Strategy will work with industry, researchers and State and Territory governments to:

• Identify and facilitate projects that demonstrate applications of enabling technologies and develop information and activities to assist industry sectors to understand the potential benefits and risks of the technologies
• Provide information to facilitate the development of technologies and their applications, including providing information about regulatory frameworks, funding programs and research infrastructure
• Facilitate links and collaboration amongst and between researchers and industry in Australia and overseas and promote Australian capability internationally
• Identify current and future skills needs, capability and infrastructure gaps with a view to developing informed strategies which will address these issues
• Contribute to establishing a policy and regulatory environment that supports businesses to undertake R&D and commercialisation and build capacity for the productive application of enabling technologies.

This work will also use existing Commonwealth programs and initiatives such as the Industry Innovation Councils and Enterprise Connect to engage industry leaders and champions and to inform them of the potential of these technologies for Australian industry.

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