Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

In April this year Australians learnt of a remarkable decision taken by the Prime Minister and the Minister for Industry and Science that Australian taxpayers would have almost $1 billion of their hard earned money tipped into an American company called PsiQuantum, which is supposedly going to build the world's first fault-tolerant error-corrected quantum computer in Brisbane. Since that time the opposition has sought to hold this extraordinary bet with public money up to the scrutiny that it deserves, and the government has trenchantly resisted that scrutiny at every stage.

Yesterday the government was forced to release documents following an order for the production of documents we initiated in the Senate. As the Australian Financial Review reported this morning, the Chief Scientist sent an email indicating she was highly sceptical about PsiQuantum's ability to deliver on its promise to build a world-leading supercomputer in Australia. The documents revealed in the order for the production of documents only add to the many questions raised by this very curious decision.

The Albanese Labor government has chosen to bet a very large amount of public money on one particular company, pursuing one particular technology path within the broad field of quantum, a field in which people working for 20 or 30 years cannot say with certainty which of the many paths being explored is likely to achieve a successful outcome. In any view it will be at least several years and very possibly longer before the technology being developed by PsiQuantum is proven to work—if it can be proven to do so at all.

We know that a very poor process was followed to get to this decision. The Albanese government agreed to assess an unsolicited proposal from PsiQuantum as early as November 2022. The Department of Industry, Science and Resources entered into a non-binding agreement with PsiQuantum in June 2023, yet the government points to an expression of interest process which commenced only in August 2023. It was an expression of interest process in which companies were invited to participate by one email only. There were no follow-up telephone calls and there was no second email. Those who were invited to participate were told they could not speak with Australian government officials. This was after PsiQuantum had been speaking for more than eight months with Australian government officials up to and including the minister, who had visited their premises in California and had met with them directly. We now know the terms of the expression of interest, because that is amongst what was revealed, which essentially ask respondents to match the promise made by PsiQuantum of building a fault-tolerant error-corrected quantum computer by 2030. Many in the sector are extremely sceptical that this can be done, but scepticism is not welcome in Minister Husic's regime.

We know that Minister Husic has a particular interest in venture capital firm Blackbird. In October 2022 he appointed Clare Birch of Blackbird to the National Quantum Advisory Committee. In December 2022 he appointed Kate Glazebrook of Blackbird to the Industry Innovation and Science Australia board. In May 2023 he launched the National Quantum Strategy with Nomad Atomics, a Blackbird funded company. On 30 April this year he announced the almost $1 billion in funding for PsiQuantum, a Blackbird funded company. Blackbird and the many other investors in this company of course greatly benefited. It is on the record that there is a close friendship between the minister's senior adviser Ellen Broad and Blackbird's Kate Glazebrook. I have written to the Auditor-General requesting that the Australian National Audit Office undertake an investigation into the Australian government's investment in PsiQuantum, and the Auditor-General has responded that a potential investigation is being considered.

This decision raises many questions, which is why I've called on the Auditor-General to investigate. Why was the much-trumpeted National Interest Framework, which we've heard about a lot, not used in arriving at this decision? When did the government reach its decision to make this investment? How did the government assess PsiQuantum's claims, including but not limited to PsiQuantum's technology being able to deliver at scale in the timeframe that PsiQuantum claimed. Let's remind Australians what the minister has promised. When this announcement was made, the minister said that this will 'bring us close to getting that fault-tolerant computer, which, by most assessments, is 2026-27'. So mark your calendars to see whether the minister's claim that we're going to get this technology and this fault-tolerant error-corrected computer by 2026-27 comes to fruition. When you speak to most people across the sector, there is deep scepticism that that is going to be achieved.

One of the obvious questions here is why this government, if it wanted to invest money in quantum—let's be clear, quantum is an important field. There's been bipartisanship support for quantum and consistent funding of quantum under both sides of politics. But, curiously, quantum companies other than PsiQuantum, such as Australian companies Silicon Quantum Computing from UNSW, Diraq from UNSW, Quantum Brilliance from the Australian National University and Q-CTRL from the University of Sydney, were told by this government that there was no money for quantum. They were directed to the National Reconstruction Fund, which of course has not yet put out $1, and they were told there was no program under which funding could be provided.

If this government was going to fund quantum at this massive scale, why did it not decide to establish and announce a program to fund investments in quantum companies with publicly announced guidelines, and why did it not invite any interested company to put forward an application to be assessed against the guidelines? Why was that good process not followed? Why did government officials advise companies other than PsiQuantum prior to the expression of interest that there was no dedicated funding available for Australian companies? Why did the government have such extensive engagement with PsiQuantum prior to the EOI process? Why was this American company in the fast lane for engagement with this minister? Why was that opportunity not given to any Australian company? Why was the expression of interest conducted through the sending of a single email with no follow-up by the department to even ascertain whether the recipients of the email had seen it and opened it? Why were the companies which participated in the expression-of-interest process not given the same opportunities as PsiQuantum for direct engagement and discussion with Australian government officials and representatives up to and including the Minister for Industry and Science? Why were the companies which participated in the expression-of-interest process specifically directed, as a term of participating, that they could not directly approach nor speak with Australian government officials? Was the negative impact on Australian based quantum companies considered when the decision was taken to allocate funding to this American company?

It is clear that the message that the Australian government is sending to international investors is that, having assessed a range of companies, it's chosen not to invest in Australian based companies, and that is a very curious decision to have taken which is making it more difficult for Australian companies to go to the private market and secure funding.

Why was such weighting given to the requirement in the expression of interest to deliver the quantum computer at the earliest possible time, rather than considering a weighted assessment of factors like the amount of production in Australia, the likelihood of the technology being approved and other relevant factors? Isn't it the case that, when you look at the expression of interest—which a number of those who participated are reported to have expressed their concerns about—it was written with a view to giving the money to PsiQuantum because the decision had already been taken?

This was nothing but a reverse engineered sham in which a minister who had been dazzled by the particular technology promises of one particular company took a decision that money was going to be spent and directed his department to reverse engineer a process to try and construct some kind of veneer of respectability. A deputy secretary who advised against this subsequently left the department after being on gardening leave for a considerable period of time. Export Finance Australia was directed to commence work on providing the funding even before the expression of interest had concluded. This was nothing but a sham, and, as a consequence, Australian taxpayers have got almost a billion dollars of their money put at risk in what is a remarkably speculative venture.

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