I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of these lands, the Gadigal peoples, and pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging.
To Helen Zhi Dent, president of ACBC New South Wales, Patrick Mayoh, CEO of ACBC New South Wales, and Lizzie Lu, partner of Baker McKenzie - thank you for this opportunity today.
Researchers working in this country have contributed some of the most important technological innovations of recent history.
Innovations that have shaped and continue to shape our world.
From the ether-fuelled refrigerator, developed by James Harrison, to the electric drill developed by Arthur Arnot.
From black box flight recorders to ultrasound scanners to cochlear implants…
From polymer bank notes to Wi-Fi…
It's a long list of innovative technologies whose origins start here in Australia.
One of the most remarkable, and most crucial to the world now, is solar panel technology.
Today, 90 per cent of the world's solar panels contain technology that was developed just over yonder, at the University of New South Wales, by a world-leading team of scientists and researchers, led by Professor Martin Green.
But when Green and his team first began work in the field, solar cells were the preserve of NASA satellites.
And the bulk of the research was taking place overseas, in the US, in particular.
With his team at the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics, Green produced a solar cell with greater efficiency than those used on NASA satellites, and better than the cells produced overseas.
They continued to improve that efficiency, generating more electricity than many in the field had thought possible.
And they defied received wisdom and led the world.
They put UNSW on the map.
They attracted support.
And they attracted people with brilliant minds and a determination and a desire to do more.
Among them was Shi Zhengrong, a Chinese postgraduate student who knocked on Green's door in 1989 to ask if he could study with him.
Dr Shi helped commercialise that solar cell research and went on to have an enormous impact on solar and the uptake of solar energy.
An impact that the Emerging Leaders in Clean Energy initiative, run by UNSW and the Advanced Centre for Photovoltaics, is continuing now, thanks to a grant from the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations.
They're adding another chapter to that story by building on that collaboration and bringing future leaders together.
The story of solar research in Australia is a powerful example of how collaboration and innovation can change the world.
And it's a great example of the expertise in Australia's education sector and the potential of education more broadly.
There are so many more to talk about.
The research collaboration between Professor Ian Frazer and virologist Dr Zhou Jian, at the University of Queensland, that helped bring about the cervical cancer vaccine.
Or the training that acclaimed Chinese-Australian director Ziyin Wang Gantner received at Swinburne Film and Television school, which has helped her build a career across film and television in Australia, China, and elsewhere.
Or the research collaboration into hearing health that is going on right now between Australian medical researchers at Macquarie University and ENT surgeons, researchers, experts and professionals in Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu.
For over forty years, now, Australia has understood that the crucial ingredient in innovation…
That the fuel for economic growth…
That the catalyst for lifting living standards and bringing about a better world…
…is education.
High-quality education.
Education that gives students skills and their societies the benefits of those skills.
As former prime minister Bob Hawke once said, when we provide high quality education, then we 'reap the benefits of the more productive lives [that our] highly skilled young people will lead.'
This understanding is why we have built an enviable world-class education system in Australia.
That system includes our subsidised, three-days per week, early childhood education.
Our primary and secondary schooling system.
Our vocational education and training institutions.
And, of course, our universities.
We've known for a long time the qualities of our education system and the potential that it offers.
It's why we welcomed students from developing countries, in the 1950s and 1960s, to come to Australia under the Colombo Plan and study at Australian universities and training providers.
We knew that those students, and their home countries, would reap benefits.
Now, under the New Colombo Plan, we are seeing a record number of Australian students taking up long-term study opportunities in China.
Similarly, it's why we started taking international students in our vocational education and training courses, in 1985.
And international students to our university courses, in 1990.
In the forty years since, Australia's education system has grown enormously.
From barely a handful of international students in the early 1990s…
To the more than 840,000 students who enrolled in Australian universities this year.
Including more than 190,000 Chinese students, almost a quarter of our international student cohort.
With half of our universities ranked in the top 200 universities worldwide, and almost a quarter ranked in the top 100, all those students who come here get a distinctive, Australian, quality education.
At over $50 billion per year, our education system is our fifth-largest export and a cornerstone of our economy.
It brings prosperity to Australians and to Australia.
It brings prosperity to our region.
And it breeds goodwill from our neighbours.
Education is a national asset for Australia and one that we will keep.
We are committed to a high-quality international education sector, with sustainable and modest growth.
And, of course, it's important that education partnerships have at their core the interests of our education providers and are aligned with the national interest.
In recent years, competition for international students has grown.
And so has demand for Australian qualifications.
We are meeting that demand by expanding our offshore campuses.
In the last decade, the footprint of those campuses has doubled.
We've established as many branch campuses in the last ten years as we did in the twenty years prior to that.
These branch campuses have been established with our partners in Southeast Asia and further abroad.
And they help their host countries meet education and skills needs at the university and vocational education and training levels.
Earlier this year, I travelled to the Philippines with the leaders of twenty-five Australian education providers.
These delegations are key to the Government's aims, under the Invested strategy, of growing Australia's economy prosperity through engagement with Southeast Asia.
We met Filipino leaders and education providers, looking for areas on which we could work together to deliver new education opportunities.
Upskilling the workforce, bringing the best of Australia's vocational education and training system, delivering Australian qualifications.
It's a point that you can see across the region and further abroad.
From the 9,000 students enrolled at the Monash University campuses in Malaysia and Indonesia…
To the 1,300 students at the UTS Sydney and Shanghai University's Sydney Institute of Language and Commerce Business School, in Shanghai…
To the new UNSW campus that will open in Bengaluru, India, in July.
These institutions are tangible proof of our deliberate efforts to be the destination of choice in the global education sector.
So that our universities and vocational education institutes are like Professor Green's solar cell research team, back in the late-1980s, drawing talented students forth, and, having equipped them with education and skills, sending them forth to change the world for the better.
Thank you.