Science and innovation minister Francis Logan has outlined an ambitious plan to develop a series of technology parks across Perth to foster the growth of targeted industries.
Science and innovation minister Francis Logan has outlined an ambitious plan to develop a series of technology parks across Perth to foster the growth of targeted industries.
Under his plan, the Australian Marine Complex at Henderson would develop as a technology park to boost the growth of the marine, defence and oil and gas sectors.
Mr Logan also envisages the development of two smaller biotechnology clusters around Perth’s major tertiary hospitals: the expanded Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in the western suburbs and the planned Fiona Stanley Hospital in the southern suburbs.
The new technology precincts would be additional to Technology Park in Bentley, which is home to more than a 100 companies.
In a wide ranging interview with WA Business News, Mr Logan said his intention to establish technology parks was confirmed by a recent visit to CeBIT in Germany, the world’s biggest trade fair for the information technology sector.
“If you want to really grow your new industries, they need to be in clusters and that means they need to be in technology parks,” he said.
“Everybody we met said that’s the only way to do it.”
Mr Logan also returned from CeBIT with a conviction that the state government should assist small WA technology companies to build connections with major industry players like Motorola, Siemens and Samsung.
He said that attending the big international trade shows was expensive, but “hanging out a shingle” was not enough to get results. “You need to talk to the majors and provide some of your product,” he said.
“We haven’t been good at continually marketing ourselves.”
Mr Logan said the government would also seek to attract big technology companies to WA.
“If we go to these trade fairs, we have to go with a very strategic and aggressive approach, to either bring business back or make connections.
“I think that’s a legitimate role for us to play and it’s a practical role.”
In regard to technology clusters, Mr Logan said the key to their success was the transfer of skills and knowledge.
“It’s the dynamic that allows those industries to grow.”
Mr Logan’s vision builds on comments he made earlier this month at the launch of a research and testing facility for the oil and gas industry at the AMC.
He described the proposed facility, which is backed by Perth company Advanced Well Technologies, as a “catalytic development that will certainly attract other oil and gas enterprises to the AMC”.
While the AMC is best known for shipbuilding and construction activities, it also has a technology precinct that includes US defence software company Raytheon and the $20 million Australian Centre for Energy Process Training, currently under construction.
“I am trying to encourage the department to take an approach to the AMC that sees it completely as a technology park.
“We will be encouraging other companies that are associated with the oil and gas industry, the marine industry or the defence industry, particularly if they are in the software or high tech area, to relocate down to the AMC technology park, because the clustering of those technologies is how industry grows,” Mr Logan said.
His plan for the biotechnology clusters would link the two big tertiary hospitals with the nearby universities (UWA and Murdoch) and the proposed research centres announced last month by premier Alan Carpenter.
The two research centres, each costing $100 million, will be funded by the state government, UWA, the WA Institute for Medical Research and the Lions Eye Institute.
Specifically, Mr Logan said he wanted hospital beds that could be used for phase 1 clinical trials, which are a key step in approving new medical products.
He also wants laboratories that would be able to conduct ‘pre-qualification’ testing of products going into clinical trials.
“There are lots of places where these things are not linked together. We have a chance to put it all together.”
Meanwhile, Mr Logan said his trip to CeBIT highlighted the latest technology trends, including the development of mobile phones that incorporate video cameras, MP3 players, personal organisers and even pop-up screens for viewing movies downloaded from the internet.
