Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party, Minister for Industry) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question, and I congratulate her on her outstanding first speech to the parliament. We see opportunities for growth in both the traditional industries, such as manufacturing, agriculture and mining; and emerging sectors, which includes the space industry, additive manufacturing and, of course, tech such as AI and quantum computing.

We have a number of programs that are specifically designed to support and assist small and medium innovative businesses. One of those programs is the Entrepreneurs' Program. We've already invested $483 million, and we're investing a further $452 million into that program. Through that program alone we've supported 12,000 businesses, increased turnover in these businesses by a billion dollars and boosted exports by $90 million. This isn't a handout from government; this is matched funding.

In the member's electorate of Higgins there are 31 businesses that have been directly assisted through the Entrepreneurs' Program, and one great example is Agersens, which is based in Camberwell. It's a local business that's created a product to help our farmers in regional Australia. We know how hard farmers work, and we know how tough it is for them at the moment. What Agersens has done is they have developed an intelligent neckband. It's GPS enabled and solar powered, and what it does is it trains animals to stay within a virtual boundary. To develop this product they worked with the CSIRO, and that's exactly what this government is doing—encouraging our small businesses and our medium enterprises to engage with our researchers so that they can get the opportunity to look for new systems, new procedures, new materials and new ways of undertaking the work that they're doing. But in the case of Agersens, it's new technology that is going to grow a local business and also support our farmers.

We backed Agersens right at the beginning with two accelerated commercialisation grants of about $890,000. This enabled them to leverage that support and to raise their own capital of $14.75 million, and to launch their product at Beef Australia last year. Their founder has said that they would not be here today without the Accelerating Commercialisation Grant. He went on to say how helpful it was in providing important validation to their suppliers and other partners.

We're backing local ingenuity and we're backing local businesses.

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