Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a real pleasure to follow the member for Chifley in relation to the Industry Research and Development Amendment (Innovation and Science Australia) Bill 2016 because he has been one of Australia's leading proponents of the start-up sector and of innovation for a very long time. We are very fortunate to have him on this side of the House because he is such a passionate advocate for the sector and for high-growth start-up firms. He is someone who has a wealth of knowledge in relation to the issues facing the sector.

That is why he was able to do such great work in really leading the charge in developing crowdsourced equity funding in this country. I was very fortunate to follow him in the debate on the Corporations Amendment (Crowd-sourced Funding) Bill 2015 as well. He outlined some of the changes that needed to be made in relation to that bill not just because of his own view, his own opinion, but also because the stakeholders had been calling for changes. For example, there were some really pragmatic, sensible changes that AVCAL—the Australian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association Limited—had proposed to make the crowdsourced equity funding provisions more workable. I am very fortunate to have done some work with AVCAL.

In the last parliament, the now Speaker and I formed a bipartisan group—the Parliamentary Friends of Innovation and Enterprise. We worked across the sector. We worked with AVCAL, and we heard from venture capitalists and angel investors. We involved the university sector, we involved start-ups themselves, and we involved everyone with an interest in innovation in this country and, specifically, with an interest in relation to start-ups and new high-growth enterprises. I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to work with AVCAL and many other stakeholders in that process. They are the people at the front line. They are the people who have a real understanding of what it is going to take to do something about the fact that, in Australia, there is more money punted on the Melbourne Cup than there is invested in early-stage start-ups.

I am pleased to speak in support of this bill because, in fact, Innovate Australia was our policy. It is a policy that the coalition mirrored. It is a policy that we announced—

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