Julian Simmonds (Ryan, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about the digital economy, in response to the motion moved by the member for Gellibrand. Obviously the digital economy has unleashed enormous potential for Australian residents and Australian businesses, but it still holds enormous potential. I think all of us in this parliament are keen to see Australians achieve their ambitions and to unleash the potential that is available to them. We are a long way from that old comment 'Everything that can be invented has been invented,' attributed to that poor commissioner of the US Patent Office in 1899. We know that that simply isn't the case and that there are many, many digital marvels to come, in front of us.

But where I take umbrage with this motion and the member for Gellibrand's speech just before me is that, once again, it's a classic example of Labor seeking to talk down our economy, to talk down the opportunities. At the end of all that, what was the member for Gellibrand's prescription but yet another summit? We don't need to keep talking about this. We have a road map that the government has put in place. We need to get on and help Australian businesses to harness their potential. There is enormous potential to improve productivity and create jobs. To do that, the digital economy must be considered as broadly as possible, across the whole spectrum of the economy. It is not to be pigeonholed, as perhaps the member for Gellibrand tried to do, in the games sector, although people are doing amazing things in the games sector. It really presents an opportunity for the whole economy, and particularly for SMEs. This is where the biggest productivity boost can come from.

We don't want to try and be, in Australia, the next Silicon Valley. We don't want to specifically target just the creation of the next college tech company. We want to help enable SMEs to achieve their tech goals, to take on board and adopt that technology which is right for their business. This is very important, and it's a difference of approach. We don't want to force every small business to be up in the cloud, but we want to encourage those businesses for which perhaps a cloud based payroll system would be best and would help them improve productivity and help them to make those decisions. We want to be there for those businesses that could help boost their sales by being part of the online marketplace and help support them to make those decisions.

The government is obviously ambitious in this space. We are ambitious for Australians, as they are ambitious for themselves. And why wouldn't we be? The ingenuity of Australians is second to none. But we need to take a considered approach. As I said, a lot of time and treasure can be put into trying to create the next Silicon Valley, when what is needed is for us to encourage those tech entrepreneurs that we have, to keep capital here in Australia when it has so many other global opportunities, and to play to our strengths. Certainly we are good at games, but in the mining, agricultural and health sectors—areas where we have global competitive advantage—our tech entrepreneurs can apply their know-how to help us create productivity gains.

There is the fantastic example in Brisbane of RedEye Apps, a tech company focused on enabling the mining sector. Why are they based in Australia? Because some of the biggest mining players in the world are here. They have structured their business and employ now almost 100 local residents. Their app helps mining companies keep their documents together in a cloud based solution. They have rightly identified, as other tech entrepreneurs have, that, in our leading sectors like mining, health and agriculture, they can develop tech based businesses around those big customers in Australia like they can do nowhere else in the world. That is our technological advantage.

But we also want to make sure that we're dealing with the digital economy in a considered way, because there are challenges. We need to make sure that there is proper data security, something that I'm passionate about. But that is a strength in itself for Australia. We are leading the world in terms of data security. That's a service that we can offer, as part of the digital economy, to other parts of the world. We want to make sure that our kids are protected from digital exploitation as well. This is something that a lot of Australians are concerned about and it's going to require us to upskill our kids significantly, to make sure that we are dealing with the threat of bullying and sexual exploitation online. And we need to continue to meet the demand for more tech workers by making sure that the skills are there in universities, like the University of Queensland in my electorate.

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