Presented by Robert Clark MP		www.robertclark.net

National Innovation Summit for Melbourne next year

The Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, Mark Birrell, has announced that Victoria has won the right to host the National Innovation Summit, to be held on February 10-11 next year.

The Summit is a collaborative effort between industry and the Commonwealth and State Governments, focusing on positioning Australia as the "clever country" by examining the barriers to our capacity to innovate and gain benefits from our innovations.

"The themes explored by the conference are consistent with the aims of the Victorian Government’s Investing in Innovation initiative, where we have committed $310 million in new money, over the next five years to science, engineering and technology, the largest amount of any State government," Mr Birrell said.

"We are also a major sponsor of the Technology Transfer and Innovation 99 conference (27-29 September), another internationally significant conference that explores issues related to the successful transfer of technology into commercial businesses," he said.

Mr Birrell said he hoped that the National Innovation Summit would deal with issues such as capital-gains tax reform, clustering of resources and commercialisation, as ways of securing the development of the knowledge economy.

(News Release, Office of the Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, July 1, 1999)