The Australian Government's Innovation Report

Business R&D
Business expenditure on R&D (BERD) is a measure of the private sector’s contribution to developing new
knowledge and refining existing technologies for commercial outcomes. Australia had an expenditure of 0.94%
of GDP in the 2006 scorecard, a significant increase from the 2004 scorecard, where the expenditure recorded
was 0.89% of GDP. Figure 8 shows that Australia’s performance in this area is slightly below the OECD
average, ranking 17 th in the OECD. Australia’s position relative to the OECD average has improved slightly
since the 2004 scorecard, from 23% below the average to 18% below.
FIGURE 8: Business expenditure on R&D as a percentage of GDP as a percentage difference from the OECD average
200
Percentage difference from the OECD average
150
100
50
0
-50
-100
Sweden
Finland
Japan
Korea
Switzerland
United States
Germany
Denmark
Luxembourg
Iceland
Austria
France
Belgium
United Kingdom
Canada
Netherlands
Australia
Norway
Czech Republic
Ireland
Spain
Italy
New Zealand
Hungary
Portugal
Slovak Republic
Greece
Turkey
Poland
Mexico
Source: OECD. Data from 2004 or latest available year. Australian data is for 2004-05 financial year.
Human Resources
Tertiary Education
The proportion of the workforce with a tertiary education is an indicator of the comparative skill level of a
nation’s labour force and provides an indication of the ability of the labour force to utilise and critically
appraise new ideas and technologies. In the 2006 scorecard, 22% of the Australian labour force had a tertiary
education, compared with 20% in the 2004 scorecard and 18% in the 2002 scorecard.
The percentage increase between the 2006 and 2004 scorecard equates to 327 000 extra people in the labour
force who hold tertiary qualifications. Figure 9 shows that Australia performs strongly in this area, ranking 8 th
in the OECD, significantly above the average.
Chapter 4 - Australian innovation scorecard 133