"Nothing is forever," Senator Sinodinos said in an interview. "Once they went through that grieving process they put their heads down and got on with it."

Car subsidies

The toughest decision made in the industry portfolio under the Abbott or Turnbull Coalition governments was to end billions in long-term subsidies for Ford, General Motors Holden and Toyota to make cars in Adelaide, Melbourne and Geelong.

The shift, which was opposed by the Labor opposition and unions, will end large-scale car making in Australia, including the Commodore and Falcon models, and triggered national angst about Australia's decline as a manufacturing economy.

Senator Sinodinos didn't express any regret at that decision, which hurt the Coalition's political support in South Australia and Victoria. He said workers in the car industry needed to be looked after but the change didn't seem to worry car buyers much.

"I haven't heard consumers complaining about changes to the car market," he said. "There is quite an array of cars for sale."

Senator Sinodinos was an economist in the Treasury Department who made his name in politics as chief of staff to Prime Minister John Howard. As industry minister he will be responsible for overseeing science policy, the CSIRO, the Office of Northern Australia, the Anti-Dumping Commission, the R & D tax incentive, and other areas.

He has said privately that he wants Australians to understand that there are costs to protecting some industries, which the government shouldn't "sugar coat".


Innovation policy

One of his biggest political responsibilities will be developing and explaining the Coalition's "innovation" policies. In an interview he emphasised that one element of the plan was to make government itself more efficient.

"What I want is to be able to say 'we have created an economy with new jobs and new sources of growth'," he said.

His predecessor, Greg Hunt, who was in the job only six months, sought to explain the vague campaign promises made by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to usher in an era of economic innovation.

Despite playing on Mr Turnbull's personal background as a technology entrepreneur, the strategy was widely viewed as a political miscalculation because millions of voters couldn't understand what he was talking about.

Mr Hunt portrayed the government's National Innovation and Science Agenda as helping business, especially small businesses, attract capital and technology that can help them expand. His bottom line was that change could drive employment.

"Innovation is actually the chance for the little guy to take on the big guys," Mr Hunt said last month. "So it is a revolution, but it is a revolution that protects jobs and creates jobs."

Political challenge


The formal innovation plan, which is a year old, promises tax breaks for businesses that take risks and innovate, to encourage universities to conduct research with industry, attract more entrepreneurs from overseas, and make it easier for start-ups to do business with the government.

Political analysts say Senator Sinodinos has a crucial job: turn Mr Turnbull's innovation rhetoric into a substantial plan that the Prime Minister can receive credit for, given most of his policy successes so far were implementing policies begun under predecessor Tony Abbott.

"Two thousand and seventeen is a make-or-break year for the Prime Minister to be able to articulate what he has brought to the table ... how then he translates it into major policy innovations that he can take credit for," said Peter Chen, a politics academic at Sydney University.

"There are a lot of question marks over the last 18 months about what exactly is Malcolm Turnbull's innovation agenda."