Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the Minister for Industry and Science for his visit to the electorate of Reid, where he did meet with some amazing students at Burwood Girls High School. When we spoke to those students, so many of them were thinking about the big challenges that we all face: sustainability and climate change. They were ready for the challenge. In fact, they were embracing that and wanting to make sure that they have a good career in science and technology so that they could be part of the solution. It was great to have you in the electorate. I can't wait to show off the amazing work that Burwood Girls High School does.

Now onto the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator (Data Streamlining) Amendment Bill 2023. There is a company with a share market value of more than US$100 billion. When it was initially listed on the NASDAQ in the US in 2015 it was trading at just US$21 a share, with a value of US$4.4 billion. In just eight years that company went from that valuation of US$4.4 billion to more than US$100 billion. It's a meteoric rise by any measure. The other numbers associated with this company are equally extraordinary. One of its products, Trello, has 50 million registered users. Another product, Confluence, has more than 60,000 corporate customers. That company is, of course, Atlassian, Australia's greatest tech success story. If Atlassian were listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, it would be among the top-20 most valuable companies on that exchange, up there with the likes of Transurban, Woodside and ResMed.

The New York Times has described it as a very boring software company because it, essentially, provides software that IT professionals use, but I think its origin story is anything but boring. Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes, the two founders of Atlassian, met at the University of New South Wales as undergraduates. Neither of them wanted a graduate job, nor did they want to wear a suit and work in a nine-to-five job. Using $10,000 on a credit card, they started Atlassian in 2002. Scott and Mike are Australia's first startup to IPO tech billionaires and are a perfect example of the potential of this bill. This bill is about investing in the entrepreneurs of the future, people like Scott and Mike.

Innovation is key to growing our economy and driving up productivity. We have to create a stronger, smarter and more innovative economy. The best way to do that is to invest in our people. Through this bill, we will support students to participate in accelerator programs at universities, because we know when it comes to innovation, when it comes to new ideas and when it comes to research, Australian universities are world-class. We know that nurturing the talent of every single Australian provides a dividend for the whole country. This bill seeks to create a new type of support for young entrepreneurs who will be the business leaders of the future.

This bill will add to the list of election commitments the Albanese Labor government is delivering in the higher education space, including delivering a university accord by the biggest and broadest review in the higher education space since the Bradley review 15 years ago. This review is being led by eminent Australian Mary O'Kane. Twenty-thousand new university places for students from typically under-represented backgrounds are targeted at areas of skill shortages, and, recently, a new agreement was struck between India and Australia to provide certainty of qualifications and provide greater opportunities for students. This bill is important for resetting relations with the sector that was neglected by the former government.

What does the bill do? It amends the Higher Education Loan Program, HELP, to create a Startup Year loan. These Startup Year loans will support final-year undergraduate students', current postgraduate students' and recent graduates' participation in higher-education based accelerator programs. They will be capped at $11,800 in 2023 but can be received twice by students to fully cover the cost of participating in accelerator programs. Like other FEE-HELP and HECS-HELP programs, Startup Year will be made directly to higher education providers who run eligible accelerator programs.

Accelerator programs have sprung up across universities in Australia—some by deliberate design by the institution, whereas others have been more organic and led by students. Regardless of how they have arisen, there are now more than 100 accelerator programs spread throughout all 39 Australian universities to help grow Australian ideas into Australian businesses.

According to Universities Australia, the peak body representing the university sector, more then four in five Australian startup founders are university graduates. So, when it comes to startups and entrepreneurs, our universities are natural breeding grounds. You are in a space where you have access to great researchers and you are in a space where you have mentors and the equipment and infrastructure to help grow those ideas. They're like mini Silicon Valleys.

These university startup programs also help to set up graduates for the jobs of the future. The nature of work is changing. Gone are the days where you entered a job straight from high school and then stayed there until you retired. School leavers are expected to have on average 17 different jobs and up to five career changes over their lifetime. That means we need to fundamentally rethink the types of skills and training we provide to young people to ensure they are not only job ready for the career that they will step into upon graduation but for the career after that and the career after that.

University based startup accelerator programs provide dual benefits. They provide students with a broad range of skills they need for a changing economy. It also creates businesses and jobs. Startups are now the largest contributor of job creation in Australia. What does this look like? I'm really proud that I can draw on some examples from my old employer the University of Sydney, whose Incubate program has been allowing young student-entrepreneurs to develop their startup ideas into fully fledged businesses.

One example is Bioscout, a company that uses air-sampling, mapping and data analytics to track agricultural disease spread. The company is currently focused on wheat stripe rust, a disease that causes an estimated $80 billion worth of damage to the agricultural sector annually. Farmers spend $24 million a year on chemicals to control the disease. These treatments are chemically intensive and must be sprayed on a crop before the disease is able to infect it. This leads to wastage, chemical run-off and environmental degradation. Bioscout has come up with a novel way of using patented sensors to monitor the amount of disease present in the air across individual fields. Coupled with data from weather stations, it provides farmers with insights into treating this disease. It has shown evidence of being able to increase wheat yields by up to 18 per cent and reduce chemical costs by 15 per cent.

Great innovation by student-entrepreneurs at a university, Bioscout is a great example of how innovation cultivated by higher education institutions can create a new class of entrepreneurs whose benefits can be shared by the whole community, in this case the agricultural community. Their innovations are applicable to the world of agriculture, food waste and sustainability, but one can only imagine how many more of the world's greatest problems might be assisted by a broader rollout of this support for early innovation.

By encouraging more student-entrepreneurs to develop their ideas, we will help to encourage an innovation-driven Australia. We know that there is an appetite out there for these types of accelerator programs. They not only provide skills and opportunities to aspiring entrepreneurs but also generate valuable connections with communities and businesses, and these Startup Year loans will help to meet that demand. They will make sure that, regardless of your background, you can access the support you need to grow an idea into a startup and then into a business. And as we know from the story of Atlassian, once you start up, who knows how far you might be able to go?

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