PRESS RELEASE: Built Here: back Australian ingenuity, build Australia’s future
The Great Hall at Parliament House will be a sea of innovation this afternoon, showing what Australia builds when it invests across the full research, development, and innovation system: new products, better services, skilled jobs, stronger industries and sovereign capability.
The Built Here Parliamentary Showcase brings together innovative businesses, Cooperative Research Centres, universities, national research infrastructure facilities and Rural Research and Development Corporations. Together, they are exhibiting hundreds of Australian innovations that are delivering practical benefits for industry, communities, and the economy.
“Built Here makes the value of sustained investment visible. What is on display today is not a collection of isolated successes. It is the result of Australia investing in the connected institutions, infrastructure, partnerships and businesses that turn research into capability, products and impact,” said Jane O’Dwyer, CEO of Cooperative Research Australia, which brought the showcase to life with a coalition of organisations driving innovation for the country.
“Australia’s productivity and economic resilience depend on the breadth of this system: the Cooperative Research Centres Program, national research infrastructure, research funding through the ARC and NHMRC, the Medical Research Future Fund, Rural Research and Development Corporations, and support that helps businesses innovate and scale. This is not the work of one portfolio. It requires sustained investment and coordination across government,” said Ms O’Dwyer.
Built Here is a call to Australia’s leaders, policymakers, and parliamentarians to back Australian ingenuity with consistent, long-term support. The ideas, technologies and businesses on display today show what is possible when we invest in Australian capability, and what is at stake if we do not. Backing our research and innovation system means backing a more productive, resilient, and prosperous Australian economy.
Participants include TechnologyOne, AIBUILD, BioCina, Quantum Brilliance, Liquid Instruments, New Frontier Technologies, Diraq, Bosch, Magellan Power, Gap Drone, First Quantum Minerals, E-HUALA, Inventia Life Science and more. Together with their R&D partners in universities, CRCs, Rural Research and Development Corporations and research infrastructure, they show how Australian ideas and expertise deliver practical benefits for industry, communities, and the economy.
Australian Innovation on display at Built Here includes:
Medical & Health
• Locally manufactured T cell therapies have improved outcomes for about two-thirds of patients treated for serious viral infections across 35 Australian and New Zealand hospitals.
• Combined engineering and cell biology has led to the development of lab-grown human heart muscle technology that can be used as a potential therapy, and in a screening plate that allows researchers to test up to 96 samples or treatments at once. Programs have already brought >$3 million of international funding into Australia.
• A Sydney innovation has become a global platform for creating human-relevant disease models for drug discovery, with ~100 instruments been sold in 17 countries, and 8 of the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical companies using the technology.
• Newly developed Abiliti soft contact lenses are helping children manage myopia progression while reducing the risk of long-term vision complications.
• A new production system for lab-grown red blood cells is set to create future transfusion options for patients with rare blood types, while building Australian expertise in scalable, cost-efficient advanced biomanufacturing.
• A combination of naturally occurring viruses that target harmful bacteria are being developed, for direct application to Epidermolysis Bullosa wounds, to test whether topical phage treatments can eliminate common bacteria, prevent or treat infection, and support faster wound healing.
• An Australian collaboration is seeking to increase live births from IVF by advancing embryo selection. A novel non-invasive approach is being explored, which shines gentle doses of light onto the embryo, capturing the scattered light that comes back to reveal the intricacies of its biochemistry.
Emerging Technologies and Advanced Manufacturing
• 20% less food waste, ~30% less reconciliation work, results from testing Argyx – a new intelligence layer helping businesses forecast risks and compare options in real retail, warehouse, logistics and infrastructure operating environments.
• An inaugural national additive manufacturing capability map is providing a clear picture of Australia’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and future priorities across defence, aerospace, maritime, mining, medical technology, energy and advanced manufacturing.
• New livestock technologies have demonstrated methane reductions of up to 80% in trials, and re: bio-based textile dyes, a reduction of CO₂ emissions by up to 90%, chemical use by 80%, and water consumption by 50%, compared with conventional dyeing processes.
• The world’s most advanced ‘on-trailer’ safety product with an advanced hydraulic braking system will lead to a measurable reduction in towing-related accidents, casualties, and trauma, which currently represent an annual economic burden of approximately $100 million.
• A new modular electric powertrain for integration into powered trailers, dollies, and hybrid prime movers is set to potentially achieve fuel savings of up to 50%, subject to the duty cycle and validation.
• Compared to conventional drilling, newly developed automated drilling fluid systems have recorded approximately 38% more metres drilled per shift, 11% less water consumed and 47% less core loss per metre, 98% active time maintained with no major downtime, and 0 increase in drilling fluid cost per metre.
• Using 3D-printed concrete walls for home building has removed formwork waste, and improved safety with no need for scaffolding at heights.
• A lab initiative has demonstrated spacecraft autonomy for Defence in orbit, and advanced AI-enabled technologies for future multi-spacecraft missions, providing opportunity to further develop space technologies across agriculture, natural resources, disaster resilience, defence, environmental management and critical infrastructure.
• EnergyConnect (NSW) is the first electricity transmission project in Australia to achieve Infrastructure Sustainability Design and As-Built ratings, both at the ‘Leading’ level. Verified outcomes include a 26-39% net ecological gain across the two project sections; up to a 41% reduction in land and vegetation clearing on the eastern alignment; a 32% reduction in construction greenhouse gas emissions; an 80% replacement of potable water with treated grey water and captured stormwater; 100% diversion of spoil and inert waste from landfill; and 1,849 wildlife connectivity corridors retained, nearly 20 times the 95 originally recommended. Since construction began, the project has diverted 45 cubic metres of timber and over 27,000 containers from landfill.
• Integrated quantum chips are set to deliver quantum technologies across sensing, computing, and communications wherever people need them.
• An advanced manufacturing facility built at Stärke-AMG is centred on Australia’s only commercially operational Electron Beam Melting (EBM) system, which provides specific advantages for producing complex, high-performance components for space and defence applications.
• “Plus”, an agentic AI capability, can turn a natural-language query into a preliminary expenditure response within two minutes, significantly reducing time spent on activities such as when the Australian Public Service prepares for Budget Estimates and deals with Questions on Notice.
• A quantum computer is being deployed inside a commercial Equinix data centre in Sydney, making it the world’s first silicon spin quantum computer to operate in a shared commercial facility. Utility-scale systems will cost less than one dollar per qubit, giving rise to economical, deployable quantum computers that will work in tandem with AI to accelerate drug discovery, materials design, and complex optimisation problems.
• A new proprietary electrochemical separation process, Direct Lithium Extraction and Refining (DLE-R™), extracts and refines battery-grade lithium in a single step, eliminating the need for freshwater consumption and hazardous chemical reagents, and protecting local ecosystems and water security in vulnerable extraction regions.
• An Australian collaboration is seeking to make beer production both more sustainable and less expensive, by examining how the malting process works now and what might change in the future, and assessing how improvements can be made by changing the raw materials that go into it.
• Zero-waste plants that can grow in space are being developed, with discoveries likely to transform our sustainable agriculture practices back on Earth.
Regional Innovation
• A new roadmap has delivered updated APVMA Biologicals Guidance, a coordinated pre-lodgment pathway across agencies, an efficacy framework refresh for biologicals, and a co-funded first-of-kind biological efficacy trial program, to address how to fix Australian producers being locked out of biopesticides available elsewhere.
• A Post-Mining Land Use Toolkit developed though industry-research-government collaboration is providing critical knowledge on mine rehabilitation, risk assessment, pit lakes, and post-mining land use.
• Bringing modern science together with cultural knowledge has created opportunities on Country – returns of up to 86:1 for individual projects, and the portfolio projected to generate ~$580 million in economic returns over 10 years.
• A 50kg payload, 1,000 km uncrewed freight aircraft has been built to deliver parcels to regional, remote and Indigenous communities, better serving these communities.
• Establishment of an Australian capability spanning power-electronic design, engineering, manufacturing, testing and lifecycle support for demanding applications, including naval DC power, contributing to Australia’s broader capability in power conversion, energy storage, microgrids and critical power systems.
• Testing an alternative irrigation source has helped identify what growers need before investing in desalination, with a trial demonstrating a novel use of aquifer reinjection for brine management, offering a lower-cost alternative to constructing evaporation basins at a site.
• Bridging the gap between complex information and sheep and cattle producers has seen a 20% increase in lambing rates in a 1,000-ewe trial in 2025 compared with 2024, with the trial expanding to 4,500 ewes in 2026.
• A collaboration is bridging leading research and real-world suicide prevention practice, building on the resourcefulness and local knowledge of rural and regional communities to translate evidence into place-based responses to persistent inequities. Since inception, >30,000 hours of professional development across 96 capacity-building events has directly strengthened the regional mental health workforce and embedded practitioners in underserved communities.
• High adoption of productivity-enhancing innovation in horticulture could generate up to $1 billion in additional annual value, lifting industry value added from $8 billion to $22 billion by 2040 by lowering labour dependence, reducing unit costs, strengthened decision-making, and more reliable output.
— ENDS —
About Cooperative Research Australia
Cooperative Research Australia (CRA) strengthens and promotes the transformative potential of collaborative, industry-led research through knowledge exchange, professional development, and advocacy. CRA represents Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs and CRC-Ps) and similar collaborative research entities, universities, industry, post-CRC entities and companies, CRC-Projects and related businesses, CRC alumni and individuals with an interest in industry-research collaboration. CRA members are a lynchpin in the Australian innovation system. They are focused on creating new value in our economy for the benefit of all Australians and represent an estimated $4 billion in collective investment in innovation and commercialisation between industry, universities and other research institutions, and the Australian Government.
www.cooperativeresearch.org.au
Media Enquiries
For media enquiries, please contact Susan Waterer, 0423 194 593, [email protected].
