Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Standing on this side of the House, I do feel surprised hearing all the negative stuff coming from those opposite who had 10 years to do something to really support startups and young entrepreneurs. They had 10 years to bring something together. They could have had all the inquiries they wanted. They could have pulled it together. And what did we get from them? Absolutely nothing. In 10 months we have done more than those opposite did in 10 years, yet all they can do is say: 'Oh, it's too soon. We need an inquiry.'

What is really terrific about this legislation is it brings to fruition an election commitment we made, an election commitment that was borne of many conversations over many years with people around the country about it. In particular, there were conversations in Western Sydney about the need for support for startups and entrepreneurs in the western part of Sydney. I note the member for Lindsay is here, and I'm looking forward to her supporting this, because she knows as well as I do the great work that the Western Sydney University Launch Pad does at its Kingswood campus. I remember when it first started—I think it was around 2015. It has been a really great stepping stone for young people of all backgrounds across Western Sydney, to be part of an accelerator and get support. That's what this legislation is about—making that even more available to people.

I note that some of the objections that I've just heard from the previous speaker relate to them still having questions. Well, that's why you do a pilot. We are not the sort of government that's just going to sit and wait and twiddle our thumbs; we are going to do stuff. The intention is that the pilot will commence from the middle of this year, so let's put it in action. And, unlike those opposite, we are also not a set-and-forget government; we will keep monitoring the progress of things and not be afraid to make adjustments as they go on.

For me, this is a crucial piece of legislation. We know that startups have a really important role in job creation. It's all about helping commercialise ideas. It's solving community and socially based problems, and often those solutions come from the communities themselves. It also helps to really strengthen the links between universities and the broader community, including business.

What we know about young firms is that across the OECD they account for around 20 per cent of employment and they create almost half of all new jobs, so they are a real engine room for creativity and job creation. In Australia, startups have a high impact on the creation of new jobs. The research is telling us that that job creation is highly concentrated, and here's just one example from a couple of years ago. In 2020 there was an increase of over 3,000 employees that could be attributed to Australia's eight most successful startups. That's a lot of jobs coming from a small number of businesses.

A few years ago I had the privilege of travelling overseas, with the now Minister for Industry and Science and the former member for North Sydney, as part of the trip with the Australian Computer Society. They wanted us to see in Scandinavia what that startup and entrepreneurial ecosystem is when it has a strong basis in technology and the digital world. We went to Estonia and Finland. What we saw were nations that were a long way ahead of us in thinking about how you create a really supportive ecosystem. I know the now minister had already been thinking about this for a long time, but what struck me, as someone who was fairly new to that environment, was the whole culture of creating space for these really clever, young people to try stuff. But what struck me, as someone who was fairly new to that environment, was the whole culture of creating space for these really clever young people to try stuff. What particularly struck me was that the first attempt is not always successful. There might be investment that they've got. They're giving it a first go. But they don't always get the result they want. What I noticed in Estonia and Finland is that that's not a bad thing. Here we seem to think, 'Oh well, that's a failure. You have had your dash. There's your turn.' What I saw there was, 'Great. That didn't work, but what do we learn from it? How do we move forward?' It's a totally different way of thinking about failure and success. As somebody who's been in business for 25 years you know your greatest learnings come from the stuff that went wrong, not the stuff that went well. So I see this as enabling a whole generation of entrepreneurs, allowing them access to a university-style FEE-HELP system to be able to keep giving it a go.

We know the benefits that there are going to be. Beyond job creation, startups have a key role in driving that research translation and commercialisation, and that's something that Australia hasn't always been a great at. We see that there's a lot of opportunity to do that a whole lot better. While this sort of program might just come across as, 'Well, here is another not that exciting way to fund you tertiary education,' it actually has some really profound possibilities that come out of it. So I commend the ministers involved in getting this done fast, and not hanging around waiting for all the little things that those opposite want to go on about—dot the i's and cross the t's. We want to get in there, do the pilot and learn from that experience so that we can make this the best possible scheme.

We've already seen universities get into this space, this university based accelerator space, with their programs which bring together industry, academic expertise and resources so that they can build and accelerate startup ideas. According to Universities Australia there are more than 100 hubs in Australian universities. The university sector weren't waiting for the previous government to get on with this. They knew what needed to be done and they got on with it. We are very proud to be able to support them and help that thrive.

The accelerator programs typically offer immersive, wraparound services to support students and first-time entrepreneurs. It might be everything from mentoring and networks, access to facilities and equipment that they need—those co-working spaces where ideas can be bounced off each other. I want to celebrate the work that universities have done on this. As I've said, in 2015 Western Sydney University knew this was a path it wanted to go down.

You can sense my enthusiasm for this, but let me turn to some of the detail of the bill. These are loans that will create a new form of assistance under the Higher Education Loan Program, the HELP scheme. These startup HELP loans will support final year undergraduate students, current postgraduate students and recent graduates participate in the higher education based accelerator programs. The assistance is capped at the maximum student contribution amount for medicine, dentistry and veterinary science, so we were very specific about where it fits and what students can access. Eligible students can receive not just one but two discrete startup HELP loans over their lifetime to fully cover the cost of their participation in accelerator programs, and, as I've said, I think that is crucial because the first won't necessarily go to plan. This system provides for there to be the learnings and then the evolution to whatever the next event is. It is just terrific to think that students aren't going to have to put all of their eggs in one basket for it. There's nothing worse for creativity than encouraging people to not take a risk. We actually want students to be creative, to push the boundaries and to take a risk on something that might work. This bill also creates legislative authority so there can be guidelines. I have heard the criticism of those opposite. In my reading of the legislation, there has been a heap of work done. The consultation that we do is genuine consultation. It is not tick-a-box consultation; it is genuinely listening to the submissions that were received.

It is worth recognising how hard it has been for the university sector, particularly in the past few years. In spite of that, they have still evolved programs. I read the submission from the G8 universities about the things they would like to see and I can see many of their ideas are in here. We look forward to working with them as we go through the pilot to understand how the programs can be made even more effective for them and for students to be able to access the support that they need. If you think about where the program sits, it is essentially boosting those connections across the university and broader community.

I want to talk for a moment about the interaction with businesses. As someone who was in business for 25 years and who worked with businesses, small, medium and large—Australian and multinational—the more we create an environment where there is support for innovation and the faster we get the translating and flowing through to the private sector, the better. I am really hoping that there will be people working in small businesses in Western Sydney, who have seen the potential for something innovative from a technology perspective, who will now have the capacity, because they can access funds to help cover the fees, to be able to get involved, and that is the thing that has been missing. You might have a great idea but finding the funding was a job in itself. In that way, many people have gone, 'I have a great idea but I'm running a business—or I am a key person in a business—and I don't have capacity to do both.' I really hope this opens up the opportunities for people who might otherwise not look at it as a possibility.

I am conscious I only have a couple of minutes left, so I just want to spend a few minutes talking about not only Western Sydney University, this program and the difference I know it will make for Western Sydney but also the whole range of innovation we are seeing there. One thing we committed to at the Hawkesbury campus of Western Sydney University was to encourage innovation in agriculture by constructing greenhouses, glasshouses, that will really focus on one of the advantages we have, which is being close to a new Western Sydney airport that may allow for niche exporting to Asia. But we need to look at how we grow the stuff that we send there. The Western Sydney University campus at Richmond is going to have around $16 million in federal funding to help construct these new greenhouses. It is not just to build some greenhouses; it is to support the programs there. They have things like mini drones that fly through the greenhouses and check whether there is insect damage, whether there are spots on the leaves. They are already doing incredible things, and we want to help them do it on a bigger scale because that kind of innovation is where peri urban societies like mine, where there is a strong agricultural base, can really look at moving that into the 21st century, maximising the opportunities that we have.

What this government is saying to universities is we believe in the innovation that you can help create and we certainly want to be part of that. I am looking forward to being able to see the progress of this project at Western Sydney University. It will create jobs. It will create construction jobs. It will create ongoing, good quality teaching and mentoring jobs. It will also build the link between the private sector and all the research. So much of what is happening there already is done in partnership, some of it with the big organisations—Coles and Woolies—some with people who have a particular expertise in one agricultural area. We're very proud of the Richmond campus of Western Sydney University and the innovation that it achieves.

I think this legislation demonstrates very clearly that this is a government that wants to encourage and grow that innovation, because we know that Australians can do the very best and cleverest stuff in the world, and we want to support them to do that. We're the ones who have faith in Australians to really get out there on the world stage and show people what we can do.

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