House debates
Monday, 7 August 2023
Private Members' Business
Digital Economy
11:21 am
Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Hansard source
Thank you to the member for Bradfield for moving this motion and for the opportunity to speak about the digital economy. I share the member's enthusiasm for Australia's tech sector. Australians often think of tech as foreign firms like Apple and Meta, but they don't always know what an incredibly vibrant and local tech sector we have here at home. We have homegrown unicorns such as Atlassian, Canva, SafetyCulture and Airwallex; we have a huge amount of world-class talent; and we have a dynamic venture capital community. It's a sector that already plays an important role in Australia's economy but one that could play an even more important role in the future.
Tech is important not just because of the jobs it creates or its contribution to GDP but because it is a key enabler of success for other businesses and because it plays, frankly, a direct role in improving our lives. It's a particularly important part of the economy of Wentworth, where I'm from. The tech sector is actually the second-largest industry of employment in Wentworth. I feel very fortunate to have met so many local people who are helping to grow and develop the sector here in Australia. I'm particularly grateful to those who could work anywhere in the world but have chosen to base themselves in Sydney and help build the Australian tech community. We have been enormously successful over the last decade, and I hope this success continues.
But that success requires the support of government and effective policy frameworks. One of the challenges for the tech sector, I think, is how to coordinate a range of policy areas so that they all support the tech sector effectively in this country, because alternatively it can mean that ministers are working at cross-purposes, such as when the Treasurer is trying to build business productivity and the industrial relations minister is trying to build reforms that undermine it. A lack of coordination can also mean that important policy issues slip between the cracks, as we see with small business, which falls sometimes to the small-business minister, sometimes to the Assistant Treasurer and sometimes to the industry minister. It's a similar problem with the tech sector, where policy issues can fall between the Treasury, industry, education and skills and migration portfolios. There's a clear need for someone at the cabinet level to have responsibility for coordinating across these portfolios—someone to act as a single point of contact between the sector and the government and someone to be a champion for the sector from within government. Whoever is appointed should, as the motion suggests, prepare a digital economy strategy that will guide policymaking across government.
The tech sector has ambitious goals. The Tech Council wants to grow the industry so that a million Australians are employed in tech jobs by 2025, the industry's contribution to GDP is $250 billion by 2030, and Australia becomes the destination of choice for those looking to start and scale a new business. To reach those goals, the government will need to refine its policies across a range of portfolios. In the Treasury space, the R&D tax credit and fringe benefits tax need to be redesigned, long-delayed payment reforms need to be implemented, and we need to ensure our institutional frameworks support the types of investment vehicles that work for startups and for tech companies. In the education and skills space, we need to lift our game with research commercialisation, improve the quality of some of our IT degrees and provide good pathways for skills development outside of universities. In the migration space, we need to make it easier for the world's most talented entrepreneurs, coders and others to relocate to Australia and make a contribution locally.
I commend the activities the government has put forward in these places, but I still feel very strongly that this coordination across the tech sector could play a very valuable role in improving the outcomes for the tech sector and for the broader economy. I'd like to see the Prime Minister appoint a digital economy minister and direct that minister to produce a digital economy green paper by the end of the year, with a white paper to follow next year. Ideally, this would be a bipartisan strategy that provides us with a clear roadmap for the digital economy, including long-term goals and actions it will need to take to support the industry's development.
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