16 March 2023

The Hon Peter Malinauskas MP
Premier of South Australia
State Administration Centre
200 Victoria Square
ADELAIDE SA  5000

Dear Premier

SAPC Inquiry – Turning Research into Economic Competitiveness for South Australia

In accordance with the terms of reference received by the Commission on 13 December 2022, I am now pleased to release the South Australian Productivity Commission's Draft Report on our inquiry into Turning Research into Economic Competitiveness for South Australia for public comment.

The Commission's central purpose is to provide you with independent evidence based economic advice on how to improve our State's economic growth and in turn, South Australian household incomes.

Owing to time constraints this report is less fully developed than would normally be the case, and we will be embarking on an intense period of stakeholder consultations to refine it and test its initial conclusions. Nonetheless we have reached a number of significant findings:

• Poor innovation performance, particularly in South Australian businesses, is largely responsible for the state’s weak growth over the past decades. If we had been able to keep pace with global technological change over the past two decades then the average South Australian full time worker would be earning $8,000 more than they are today.
• South Australia is at the edge of some potentially very significant economic opportunities, particularly from the AUKUS submarine build and from the state’s potential to contribute to the global green energy transition.
• However, the weakness in our state’s innovation performance has not just held back incomes and jobs growth over the past decades. It also represents a barrier to South Australian’s fully realising the benefits of the emerging opportunities.
• In response we have developed a draft reform package focused around how the state’s universities engage with business around innovation, to better align incentives and build common understandings and approaches.
• These reforms have the potential to transform the state’s economy delivering high-skill, high wage jobs for many more South Australians. As with all proposed microeconomic reform there will be understandable debate. We are looking forward to working with stakeholders over the next two months to improve our proposals.
• I take this opportunity to thank my hard-working colleague Mr Steve Whetton and our inquiry team for their high quality assistance on this important assignment.

Yours faithfully

Adrian Tembel

CHAIRMAN

Chair and Presiding Commissioner

Adrian Tembel
T: 08 8226 7744
E: adrian.tembel@sa.gov.au

Inquiry Lead

Steve Whetton
T: 08 8226 7705
E: steve.whetton@sa.gov.au

Administration

Simone Vanzati
T: 08 8226 2654
E: simone.vanzati@sa.gov.au

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