DERBYSHIRE, Mr Peter, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering McGAGH, Mr John, Board Director, Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering [by video link] [09:52] CHAIR: Welcome. Do you have any comments to make on the capacity in which you appear? Mr McGagh : I'm also, by way of background, a chemical engineer and an economist who spent 35 years in the mining and mineral industry in various onsite roles, strategic roles, assessment roles and global functions. CHAIR: Thank you, Mr McGagh. Although the committee does not require you to give evidence under oath, I should advise you that this hearing is a legal proceeding of the parliament and therefore has the same standing as the proceedings of the House. The giving of false or misleading evidence is a serious matter and may be regarded as a contempt of parliament. The evidence given today will be recorded by Hansard and attracts parliamentary privilege. I'll now invite you to make an opening statement before we proceed to a discussion. Mr Derbyshire : We would first like to take a moment to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land we are meeting on today, the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples, and reflect on their long history of achievement as Australia's first scientists and technologists. We pay our respects to elders past and present. Thank you for the opportunity to address you today. Electric vehicle batteries, solar panels, computer chips in the mobile phones in our pockets and many of the appliances in our homes all rely on critical minerals. The world is using more minerals and in greater volumes than ever before. They are becoming essential to how we live our lives, our economy and our national security, and Australia is central to all of it. Of the 31 minerals on Australia's critical mineral list, Australia has moderate to high geological potential in 27 of them. This creates an opportunity for our country—an opportunity to expand our mining industry, an opportunity to create employment and genuine co-ownership with local communities and an opportunity to control our own resource security. But we need to do more than just dig up minerals and sell them. We need to be involved in the processing and value adding once our minerals are out of the ground. We don't need to do everything, but we can't do nothing. We will all need a skilled workforce in order to do this, but we aren't producing enough mining engineers and geoscience graduates. Ten years ago, we were producing 300 mining engineer graduates. Today, it's just over 100. Geoscience enrolments fell 43 per cent between 2013 and 2022. If we want to expand our critical minerals industry, this is unsustainable. To make the most of this opportunity, more students and more diverse students need to choose mining engineering, geoscience and related fields. That will require action across the entire pipeline, from schools to universities to industry and government partnerships. Students need to see that these are not just jobs of the past but careers that will shape Australia's future. The challenge before us is clear—to turn our mineral wealth into industrial capability, skilled jobs and long-term economic resilience. Australia has the opportunity; now we need to build the workforce and the industry to match it. CHAIR: Thank you very much, Mr Derbyshire. I appreciate that, and I think there wouldn't be anyone on this committee that wouldn't be in furious agreement with the things that you have said there. 'How do we do it?' is the big question. From an engineering perspective, some of my best, most practical friends are engineers, and the beauty of them is that they tend to be solutions focused. Mr Derbyshire : Absolutely. CHAIR: To you and Mr McGagh, we are interested in drilling down further. You may have heard some of the evidence that was previously given. The committee is not just here for busywork. We're actually here to make solid recommendations. So we would not only value your oversight and insights into this but some of the solutions. It is important that we maximise the value chain on critical minerals. It is important that we train more geologists and engineers but doing so. If history is a precursor to the future, then it seems to me we're on a downward trajectory, and we've got to not only stop that but reverse it—reverse engineering and getting more engineers! Can you talk to us about that? Let's get into some granular detail about what you feel some of the solutions are. Mr Derbyshire : Absolutely. John, please feel free to add anything that I may miss. Some of the solutions in the training of engineers and engineer space are very much around—and this was mentioned a moment ago with the previous witnesses—the perception of mining, geological sciences, geoengineering and exploration mining. It is seen as almost a dirty career to go into, which we know is not true. It is the fact that we need these people to be finding the critical minerals, developing the critical minerals and, honestly, then processing them in an environmentally sustainable way, which doesn't always happen when we ship our raw ore off to other countries. That's the area that we need to really encourage students to get into. I'm in furious agreement with the Minerals Council, who said a moment ago that this is not something that happens at the university level. The training does, but, if the universities aren't getting the interest from students at a high school level and they're only getting three or four people enrolling in a geoscience course, it's not sustainable to run that course. So we really need to look at that area. We were talking to some people the other day, literally, about this. We have these superstar astronomers—such as Brian Schmidt, for example, a fellow of ours—but we don't really talk much about our superstar geologists. Unfortunately, I only got this idea two days ago when I was speaking to someone, so I haven't had time to go and find out who our, dare I say, 'rockstar' geologist might be. Sorry, that was a terrible joke, but I'm going with it. CHAIR: I think pun absolutely intended and for good effect! Mr Derbyshire : But I do think that's actually what we need. We need those people to be out in front, talking about the work that they're doing and how that is going to lead to a better world, because we know from talking to the students from the programs we run both in high school and at university that the next generation really want to save the world. They are genuinely excited about how they can help make a better world. So they need to see that mining is not just a lucrative financial decision to make as a career but actually going to help save the world. It's going to help produce the minerals to create the solar panels and the wind turbines and all of the electronics that need to go into the future. That's what we need to see happen. It's not a quick fix, unfortunately, because we're talking about inspiring people who are in their early teens. The time it takes them to become mining engineers is a 10- to 15-year process, to be honest. CHAIR: This is a comment that doesn't reflect the attitude of the committee. It's a personal comment. I think that, in the last 20 years, in a genuine approach to protect and preserve our planet, a great disservice has been done to the environmental and engineering sciences. People have said that, because the climate is changing and we do need to do things differently, mining and things have been viewed through a critical, negative lens. I think that's actually done a great disservice to the planet, because we actually need the experts to do this really well. I'm hoping that we're now getting smarter about all of this and, rather than just saying we need to stop everything to make the planet better, we actually need to do things better. Look at critical minerals and rare earths. They are the future of protecting our planet and us living more sustainably on it, but we still need to mine them and we need to do that really well. So I think we're at a really important cultural intersection in the world at the moment, where people are actually starting to realise mining is not the enemy and the geological sciences are super important for our future. I'm really happy that these points are being raised. Mr McGagh, would you like to add? I'm sorry; it sounds like I'm trying to direct. Mr McGagh : I'll move up the value chain. I think we've covered the geological sciences—tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. I'll be quite brutal. Mining doesn't do a good job of positioning what actually happens within the industry as far as the level of new technologies and the level of important roles that it's creating—certainly here in Australia. By way of my background, I led the Rio Tinto innovation group when we rolled out the first level of autonomy, artificial intelligence, machine learning and remote operations, and effectively we led the world. We don't actually position those really important jobs. We also don't position the knock-on ecosystem effect inside Australia. There's a group called Austmine. You may not be aware of it. The effort was started under the Howard government. Austmine is arguably the single greatest group of innovative, successful, high-technology startups and service companies in the Australian ecosystem. Austmine looks after that group. It looks after what's called the METS sector, which is the mining, engineering, technology and services sector. We dominate—and I'm going to use that word unashamedly—in many of the high-technology infrastructure systems. Perth is the software Silicon Valley of the mining industry. The jobs that we are bringing into our industry now are high-technology jobs. They're machine learning jobs, they're artificial intelligence jobs and they're mechatronic jobs. The remote sensing that takes place in in geology is akin to anything that NASA does with the with the gravity gradiometry and the quiet flyby of the satellites. So we just don't position it. We remain silent. I sit on an advisory board for one of the Australia's GO8 mining schools. It's a great school, and I'm really frustrated with it. They see it, but the industry itself does not do that. When you're driving down the road and come to—I don't know—Palantir or those kind of companies, what you're not driving down the road and seeing on those on those billboards that are moving and in the feed systems and social media systems is 'Come to the high technology of the mining industry.' I have one last close-out. The impact of artificial intelligence on the role of engineers in toto in our society is going to be significant, and it is accelerating. I've been doing work with the universities and the professional engineering institutions in the UK. There are also the roles of education and the amount of technology coming into our industry. We need to lead the industry with new technologies that are environmentally more sensitive in their performance—in fact, environmentally superior—compared with what we've had in the past. Of these 31 critical minerals, half are of high attractive geology. Of the rare earths, we have monazite; we have high geology attraction in there. Especially in the rare earths, we need to develop the high technology recovery systems to take the four important rare earths through to the metals and envelop a process here in Australia so that we can have shared tailings facilities, because individual mines are not going to be able to stand it on their own balance sheet. We have the scientists, we have the engineers, and we have the development. If we can create the business case, we will attract the investors. I work on a venture capitalist investment fund that is only focused on sustainable development investments in the mining industry. It's about publication; we've got to get into the minds of the wider population and the minds of those people coming through the STEM degrees. We have to celebrate the success and the value-add that this industry is creating—not duck the sins of the past; the environmental legacies are there, and we've got to fix them—and we've got to create a new technology pathway so that we can add value for Australia. CHAIR: Michelle. Ms LANDRY: The whole employment thing—the lack of engineers and skilled labourers—is something that obviously affects my electorate quite a lot. We have a lot of coalmines in the area. Last term, I was on an inquiry into manufacturing, and there were the same issues. People think that these are dirty jobs—that they're out in the warehouse and they're hot, sweaty or whatever. They don't realise that these days they're in air-conditioned offices a lot of the time or they're working with machines. As you say, there's a lot of innovation; a lot of it's robotics these days. The Minerals Council of Australia has actually done an advertising campaign encouraging people about the benefits of the mining sector. My son-in-law is a fitter-turner, a machinist, and I've often said to him, 'You should go back to uni and become an engineer.' He says, 'I don't think I could do it,' but he actually could. I think that's part of it, too; sometimes people don't think that they have the capability. Maybe, when you've got these guys who are very skilled at what they do and need to go on to that next step, we need someone sort of pushing them a bit to go on to that next step and become an engineer and have a very good future. They're very highly paid jobs as well. Do you think that there's a place here for government to help a bit with advertising what's available in the mining sector—that a person can become a geologist, an engineer or whatever? This could help kids, particularly in city areas, to think that this is a good profession to go into. In the regional areas, where there's mining, kids are going into those jobs. But it seems that city kids think 'mining' is a dirty word. Mr Derbyshire : A few years ago, ATSE released the report Our STEM skilled future. It looked at a number of things, but it was very much looking at the area around engineering and how we get more engineers into the workforce. The reality is that we do need to do better at talking about why engineering is an exciting and interesting career and what it actually entails—that you don't necessarily have to be the brilliant mathematician who decided, 'I like building bridges.' You can be someone who is a fitter and turner, who actually knows how to use all the machines already. Quite frankly, a lot of manufacturers and mines will tell you that someone who is a fitter and turner and becomes an engineer is far more valuable to them than someone who is just fresh out of university as an engineer, because they've got an understanding of how it works on the ground as well as the engineering. Our focus is very much on both the university and the high school level. We run one program called STELR. It was set up by Alan Finkel when he was our national president, about 17 years ago—I'm hoping I've got that date right. That's really focused on getting practical engineering experience into the schools across Australia. The goal is that it's aligned with our science curriculum, so we don't have to create a whole new curriculum. It's designed in a way that provides teachers with the resources they need so that, if they're not an engineering teacher or a maths teacher, they can teach engineering with hands-on, practical experience in a way that works for someone who's not an experienced engineer—because I think that's the first point where people fall out of the engineering pipeline. If they have someone teaching them who's a brilliant teacher but isn't an engineer or a mathematician or a scientist, there's the nervousness that comes with that, and that tends to put people off. So that's one thing that we work on to try and help drive that. We provide that to schools, and we have a way that companies donate to help provide that to schools as well. The next part is also looking at the people who don't typically become engineers and miners. I'm talking very much about women, especially. That is part of the workforce. If we're taking all of the interested men in mining and we're already putting them into engineering and giving them jobs, we need to find the untapped pool of resources. So this is not necessarily just a diversity question; it's just about numbers and workforce. Getting women into those programs is the way to do it. So we also, on behalf of the Australian government, deliver Elevate, which is boosting diversity in STEM. It's really about getting women not just into all of STEM but into those areas where we need the workers. We're talking mining, engineering, technologists and all of those things. Those are programs that we know, again, will take some time to work on it, but they are the opportunities to grow the workforce. In the meantime, as I said, we're talking 15 years down the track, from high school onwards. For getting those people in there, I think there should be a push from government, be it state or federal. I know that in WA there's always a push to get people into mining because that is an opportunity that's especially prevalent in WA, but the reality is that we shouldn't just be training people in WA and Queensland, the big mining states. You're right: we should be training people in the inner city and saying, 'This is an opportunity to live in Perth'—I'm going to be very biased because I'm from Perth originally—'an absolutely beautiful city. You can come and have a lovely lifestyle. You don't have to be a fly-in fly-out engineer. You can be someone who works in the city centre who's doing remote mining and remote sensing and things like that.' These are some of the newer opportunities. I think government absolutely could get behind helping explain these opportunities to people. CHAIR: Mr McGagh wants to add something there, and Ms Cook's in feverish agreement about Perth. I'd like that to be noted for the record. Mr McGagh : By the way, I lived in Perth for seven years and also resided in the great town of Kununurra for three. I think Peter's covered that very well. For people that are doing a trade now, that are trained technicians, there are routes through to becoming professional engineers. The world is moving towards lifelong education, because the systems that we're using within our engineering world are changing so quickly. I am a past president—but it's UK based—of the Institution of Chemical Engineers. We have 40,000 members, and this was coming through. I'm very familiar with Engineers Australia here. There is another pathway that we don't tend to promote that much, which is starting off as a technician and looking at what qualification modules will be required to move up the professional qualification ladder. These things add value to the individual as they go through, and it's a lifelong learning approach that actually is taken up by other countries with more focus—but it's coming through here now. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that a technician can go through a lifelong learning module approach overseen by the mining college in Engineers Australia and become a fully qualified professional engineer. The other point I just want to keep stressing is that lifelong learning, as the systems and the technologies are changing so quickly, is going to be a major focus for our country and all other countries going forward. In addition to what I learned when I did my degree, I've learned a lot through my life. If I did that degree again, it would be out of date. CHAIR: Thank you, Mr McGagh. That's one of the thought processes behind fee-free TAFE. The more people we can get into TAFE—hopefully they can continue that lifelong learning, microcredentialing and all of these new things that are coming in. That's a very good point to make. Mr Burnell? Mr BURNELL: Thank you both for providing evidence today. I wanted to go back to the perception of the mining industry and some of your comments regarding potential barriers to participation for engineering pathways. I'm keen to understand. Has there been research that's gone and looked at young people leaving high school and whether or not there is a specific factor stopping them from pursuing a science and geoscience pathway? Mr Derbyshire : I'm not aware of any specific research on that, but I can always get my team to have a look at it for you on the specificity of geoscience. I know the Australian Academy of Science recently looked at how many we're training and whether we're training enough, and they've found that we're not. But I'll have my team look at geoscience specifically. For a broader STEM focus, the answer we usually get is—and I can't quote the numbers for you—'I don't feel like I'm good enough at maths. I don't feel like science is for me.' I'm going to be slightly critical of the STEM community, which I am part of, in that we don't do a very good job of explaining to people the broadness of the careers that certain STEM degrees get you. This is where social sciences and humanities are quite good because they explain to people that, if you're doing a history degree, you're not necessarily going out to be a historian. You're developing all of these skills that can give you so many different opportunities, whereas, if you go in to be a chemical engineer, there's an expectation that you're going to become a chemical engineer. I was a zoologist, and I'm doing policy and government relations. I'm not going to talk about any of the connections there. CHAIR: It's highly appropriate! Mr Derbyshire : The reality is that we need to get better at talking to our students at a high-school level through our careers counsellors and the like about the fact that you're choosing a career at a high-school level but the skills you're going to get at university and in TAFE are going to set you up for more than just that narrow area. If you're going into a STEM degree, you're learning data analytics, you're learning problem-solving and you're learning how to look at things with critical thinking. That's part of it, but the actual barriers for when they're leaving high school and choosing their degrees—I'm not sure. I can probably look into finding and taking that on notice if you're okay with it. Mr BURNELL: I'm interested to understand whether or not there's been research done in partnership with the Minerals Council, because it's not just geoscientists; it's also the engineering pathways. I would have thought that that would have been something that was front of mind and that, if there's a diminishing pool of participants in these study fields, you'd want to understand the root cause as to why people are not picking them up, whereas, 10 or 20 years ago, there wasn't an issue with people signing on to those pathways. The other thing I wanted to touch on though was that I noted here in recommendation 8 of your submission that you're talking about extending the paid prac placements to engineering degrees and incentivising enrolments. What I wanted to ask in relation to that is: does industry do any professional development pathways for trade technicians et cetera. I can relate personally. I spent 10 years in the offshore gas and oil sector. I was a maritime operator by trade. I did my marine operations trade certificate as a chief integrated rating. I would have loved nothing more than to transition across to a marine engineer, but, because I didn't have technical qualifications, I wasn't accepted on that pathway. I'm interested to understand what pathway opportunities there are for people that are coming into the mining field, maybe as TAs that can then work their way through into a more formal pathway of training that might be subsidised via their specific mining company that they may be working for. Does that exist, and is there a partnership between you and that company? Mr Derbyshire : We don't have a particular—actually, I'll backtrack a little bit. The other part about getting just sheer numbers in—you've mentioned that we haven't—is international students. We have relied heavily on our engineering workforce to come internationally. COVID saw a big drop in that, as you would expect. But we also know that the rest of the world is going through the same things we are now. We're not the only country going through a clean energy transition. We're not the only country looking for critical minerals. So we're not going to find the international students coming across, learning and staying to do the engineering jobs we need. That's also where some of that dip has come from, and it's where we have to now do more than what we've done in the past domestically. John has got his hand up, but I'll let him speak in a minute. On the pathways in, I know that universities have got better at providing those broader pathways into engineering workforces, especially those from trade. I think and ATSE's view is that we'd like to see better relationships between the VET sector and the universities. I think it's almost a two-way street in that regard. For a long time, VET has been seen as way into university. But, frankly, there are also a lot of things that universities teach you where you could benefit by doing a couple of VET courses at the same time. I could go back to the mining engineering point. Having some of our mining engineers go to do some VET courses on being fitters and turners at the same time would not be a bad way to do things, but we just don't have that perception. We almost see it as a tiered system. You do TAFE, and then you step up into university. We need to see more of that crossover between the two. As far as partnerships in industry, I think John probably has a better answer to that, given his role at the universities. Mr McGagh : I'll just back up a little bit. The pathway from a technical role through to a professional qualification in the Australian context—I can give you chapter and verse for the European ones—would be within the purview of Engineers Australia. The academy is having a meeting with Engineers Australia in the next couple of weeks. I need to look at my diary. So I'll take away a little bit of feedback that I think we can provide, Peter. We'll have that conversation with Engineers Australia and report back. Trust me, it'll be less than a one-pager to say, 'Is this there, and is it worth talking to?' I thought that was an excellent question that was posed. It's a confusing world out there, and the clearer it can be made—but for professional registration in the Australian context, it is Engineers Australia. They will be dealing with the universities because they effectively pre-qualify the syllabus. As far as placements in industry are concerned, I cannot support that enough whichever way we can do it. There'll be light placements. There'll be heavy placements. In my past roles in the innovation world, we were basically bringing in candidates and postdocs. There weren't that many because of the technology that we were in. But to expose yourself to industry, to have that exposure—also it's got to be a two-way path. The industry partner has not got to be looking for cheap labour. I'm sorry; I'm summing it up as bluntly as I can. There's a two way agreement in that the person coming is going to do a valuable role. It's got to be valuable to the employer but also valuable to them. That's probably something for a piece of policy work. I don't know who would do that, but policy guidelines would be very useful. I did four industry placements when I did my undergraduate degree, and I learned more there about how stuff works, but those days are gone. That was in history. That's all I had to say. CHAIR: Thank you, Mr McGagh. Trish. Ms TRISH COOK: I come from Perth, where everybody knows somebody in their family or has a friend in their circle who is in mining. To hear that over there where Michelle is that mining is a dirty word—I mean, in Perth and in WA, we're very conscious that mining is— Ms LANDRY: It's not in Central Queensland. Ms TRISH COOK: Oh sorry. CHAIR: The West is different about this. I speak to Madeleine King, the resources minister, and there is just a different culture because it is such a massive part of your economy and your lives, quite frankly. I think many of us are envious. I mean, in the Hunter, we have a similar situation. Anyway, please, Trish, go on. Ms TRISH COOK: Occasionally we lose engineers to politics, like the member for Swan, Zaneta, who's a chemical engineer. But what we have over here is the problem that our local utilities can't get the workforce because they've all gone to mining, especially electricians and tradies and so forth. What I wanted to turn to was, in your submission, you highlighted e-waste recovery. We've just heard from the Minerals Council how it's such a lengthy process to dig up the dirt—17 years on average. Of course, we want to focus on improving that, but I would also like to see those opportunities in e-waste recycling happen. Could you give us a picture of what is happening in that space. Where are the opportunities most likely be? What can we gain from developing that sector? Who is best placed to develop that sector? Is it government, or is it industry? Mr Derbyshire : I think it is a very important question because as we all know, many of the critical minerals we're talking about aren't necessarily present in huge quantities. Some of them, as John will no doubt tell me in a moment, come as a by-product of other mining processes, which is also important. I think the e-waste space is really important. Australia is actually really good at recycling. From our construction fields, we recycle about 80 per cent of what we use in construction and demolition. In e-waste, we're not nearly as set up for that yet. I think looking at how we set up the construction industry and demolition industry, gives us a beautiful template of how to go forward. Obviously, e-waste is a little more complex, and that's where we get into almost two areas where we need to look into this. One is the research and innovation required to not just do the e-waste recycling, but also to make it more commercially viable, because it's not going to ever become an industry on its own while it is still more economically viable to dig up the dirt. The other part of it is about—and we did a report on this, which I'm happy to pass on to the committee afterwards—setting up the things that where mining for e-waste is designing them from the start to be recyclable. Initially, we tend to create new products, whether they're solar panels, mobile phones or computers to be made to be as effective and efficient and as cheap as possible so that the consumer will buy them. The area where the government can probably play the biggest role is requiring some of these new areas where we're really interested in them being designed to be recyclable or reused in the first place. Investing in research and innovation that creates solar panels that are not just cheap and easy to make in China but are made in Australia and recyclable and something that we can then reuse. So preparing that in advance is probably the best way to do it. Again, it's one of those things where that idea would have been great 30-years ago when we were building the first round of solar panels. But we can only do what we can do until one of my brilliant fellows builds me a time machine. I think those are the two points. The other part of it is that data sharing is incredibly important in the waste industry. Being able to understand what is in all of these things and where the technologies are, is something that Commonwealth government especially can play a role in. That is, ensuring that information between those doing the recycling and those who are doing the designing and manufacturing of these things are providing the information required to set this up. Then, if we go to the actual e-waste or the mining of mineral tailings and things like that, that's another area where I know John works on, the leaching of copper. I think you said to me yesterday, John—or I've probably just put words in your mouth, hey, I got it right; look at me—about those opportunities, to really look at where we've done the mining, and we've got the tailings, but there are still valuable resources in those tailings. They may not be as economically viable as fresh resources, but they're still valuable and will become more valuable as we develop new technologies. CHAIR: Thank you for that. Thank you, Trish; I appreciate that line of questioning. Ash. Ms AMBIHAIPAHAR: Good morning, everyone. Reflecting on your opening remarks about graduate numbers dropping from 300 to 100, 300 is pretty niche, I think, particularly in my background—I'm a scientist by trade. In the world of human anatomy, cell pathology and histology, which is also very niche, there are maybe only 13-odd body programs across the country, probably with teams of 10. That's also quite niche. I kind of fell into it purely by chance, through studying human anatomy at Sydney uni. Can you give me some reflections on whether being so niche creates uncertainty about going into such a field? It probably plays a role. I'd love to know if you've got any thoughts on that. We'll start off with that. Mr Derbyshire : Some universities will tackle this issue in different ways. I know the University of Western Australia now has a broader degree program that gives you a broad education, then you move into mining engineering. The benefit is that it creates more well-rounded students who can then be more flexible about their careers. The challenge is that it means it takes a bit longer to become an engineer, because you're adding an extra year onto your degree. There are cost benefits to doing that broad-to-narrow approach. In reality, when someone chooses their university degree—as you said, you sort of fell into your field. But I imagine that, if you go back to your thinking in high school, you were thinking, 'I'm interested in science, anatomy and biology.' Ms AMBIHAIPAHAR: Correct. Mr Derbyshire : Then you had your first couple of years of university, and then you fell into the specialist area that you're in. I think that's where we need to be worried about how students are choosing engineering. If they're coming in and saying, 'I want to be an engineer,' or, 'I want to be a geologist,' it's then about whether they're going to become an exploratory geologist or a geoscientist or a hydrogeologist. That's where niche-ness comes into it. If we give the people who go into those fields the right skills at that level but also explain to them—and this is one area in which I think we can do much better—what skills they've developed beyond the niche skills they've developed, it becomes much easier for them to switch careers. I went from computer science to zoology and reptile heart function to policy and politics. I think that's only because I am fairly flexible in what I've learned, rather than focused too much on the details—although, if anyone wants to talk about reptile heart function, I'm more than happy to do that as well. CHAIR: You know politicians don't have hearts! Mr Derbyshire : I'm not going to comment on that one! CHAIR: We'll just take that as the chair's indulgence. Mr Derbyshire and Mr McGagh, thank you so much for your time today. It really has been a valuable conversation. You will be given a transcript of your evidence and an opportunity to make corrections to any transcription errors. There are a couple of items that we've asked for additional information on, so the secretariat will liaise with you and let you know our timeframes around that. We sincerely thank you for your input into this inquiry—your excellent submission and your evidence today..