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INDUSTRY & RESEARCH
CR: Why are we at risk of losing the long-term benefits of this research offshore if government fails to offer significant investment?
MS: Quantum information technologies won’ t be developed at any scale in Australia without government investment. Internationally, there are lots of places working on this project, and in all instances, governments are putting lots of support behind it. The emerging pattern globally is for industry to follow government investment.
So why, with government investment, would Australia be a contender to develop the technology? Australia has, through the ARC Centre of Excellence scheme, been funding the project for quite a while. It started out as a purely fundamental research project and now there are lots of successful results, making us a world leader in this area. We have a lead of two to three years on the rest of the world and a very strong patent portfolio. From this position, we should be able to stimulate hightechnology industries here in Australia for the long term.
It’ s not just a single device; it’ s a whole new approach to computing. As a consequence, there must be more of a significant investment across the board to make it happen.
What impacts on Australian industry would it have if developed here? The ability to do certain calculations much faster would affect most industries in Australia. It’ s predicted to have an impact on the transportation and logistics industry, the banking industry, the finance industry, the defence industry, the health industry – anywhere where you need to have computational power to allow you to search large databases or do calculations in parallel.
It’ s almost like looking back to before we had computing. The impact of classical computing was quite a transformation across the economy. It’ s the same kind of change we’ re expecting in the future.
Why isn’ t government investing in developing this? Government is investing in developing this, through the Australian Research Council. This is how we ' ve built up such phenomenal capability in quantum research. However, others are now learning from our success and scaling up. They can see the prospects for transitioning from fundamental breakthrough research to development and application. I guess other countries have realised that if the government actually supports [ this transition ], that bridges the gap.
Is there significant private-sector investment in this technology as well? That’ s starting to happen across the world. Indeed, we have been trailblazers, attracting investment from the Commonwealth Bank. But industrial funding tends to flow with government investment. [ For example ] the Dutch Government has recently put € 300 million euros into this field, which prompted Intel to send € 50 million to the same team. Likewise, the UK has put £ 270 million into quantum technologies. As a consequence, lots of start-ups are emerging there because they realise they can leverage that funding.
What would be the consequences for Australian industry if the quantum computer were developed offshore? I think the tragedy would be that there is every opportunity for the quantum computer to be developed here. We have proved that the system we ' ve chosen to build the quantum computer in( in silicon) has the best qubits and we have patented the fabrication technologies for doing this here. We ' re known to be world leaders. People have seen internationally that our approach is a very good way to go. A lot of places across the world are now desperately trying to copy what we do. If we cannot increase our investment, we will lose returns on the investment we ' ve made to date and, even worse, lose the potential to develop an exciting high-technology industry here.
What can be done to encourage more investment from government and other sources into this technology? We’ ve certainly been talking with government and industry, and people recognise that we are world leaders. I think we’ ve established that unequivocally. Going forward, it’ s a question of how you build scale as you shift towards translation. This is an area that is difficult and in which Australia has struggled to date. Perhaps our situation can be seen as a test case. We know that building a quantum computer is hugely valuable for our future, and as a consequence, we’ re asking what we can do to make it happen here in Australia. It’ s a challenge for industry and government. We’ ve been talking to people like Catherine Livingstone, who’ s the head of the Business Council of Australia, and she recognises the challenge. It ' s something Australia needs to figure out. ■
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