Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Good for you. That is great. It is great to see that you actually do something, and it would be interesting to see if you can up come with an idea other than something that was championed by Christopher Pyne or in response to the pressure that we have been putting on, but we will not see you champion that.

Mr Hunt interjecting—

We will wait and see, Minister. As I said, what has become obvious is that we do need to have more of a focus in this space. Other countries have worked out that if they mobilise and put the commitment in early, they will see the response. They will see communities emerge where early-stage innovation is embraced, new firms are being created and jobs are being generated, as a result of that, to deal with the type of job impact that happens through technological change and automation. And people will see that it is not just in the heart of cities that this type of innovation occurs, but that it came happen in the regions—like in Bega. I visited Bega with the member for Eden-Monaro last year and earlier this year, and we saw the types of things that were happening there in innovation week. A small start-up community has emerged there. It is backed up by local people who are willing to invest in that innovation, and we saw that type of job creation emerge there.

Why shouldn't it happen down there in Bega? Why shouldn't it happen out in Maitland—where I visited earlier—where start-ups are looking to secure markets in Australia, the US and Europe?

Mr Kelly interjecting—

They are backed by a proper investment in platform infrastructure, as rightly pointed out by my colleague and friend the member for Eden-Monaro, in the NBN, which needs to happen as well. Why should it not happen in other parts of the country as well, where they believe that they can turn around economic fortune by an investment in people, skills and infrastructure to make that occur? It should not be something that is just restricted to the inner city. It should be something that sees knowledge jobs created out in our suburbs and regions. That needs a championing as well for the resources to go in there.

It is not going to happen if you purely think that the only way you are going to do it is by driving innovation or adopting someone else's idea without having a solid, early-stage innovation culture being generated in this country. That is what is at risk right now. Your retreat from the start-up community in this country, your failure to talk up for them and this whole diluting of this message that we are seeing, right now, is a terrible indictment. It is also a failure to support a start-up community that invested a lot of itself in supporting the Turnbull government and that believed you would be able to continue championing their cause, but they cannot see that being delivered right now. The test will be whether or not we see a change. But based on the early indications, I do not think that there will be. I think this is a government that are now settled in their view that it is too tricky, too difficult and beyond their wit and capability to argue that, because the world is going to change through automation and technology, we need to be ready for it, we can be ready for it and we can maximise the benefit to the economy and communities across the country. We also need to ensure that, when others in the world want to work out how thriving start-up communities can emerge, they look to Australia for a change, instead of us always having to look to another part of the world—to Silicon Valley, to Israel or to somewhere else—to learn lessons. We should be driving the lessons, not the other way around. (Time expired)

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