Trent Zimmerman (North Sydney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am fortunate to represent an electorate which includes what is arguably Australia's third or fourth largest CBD in North Sydney, along with other major commercial centres like Chatswood. My electorate is home to thousands of businesses across the electorate that work in the full range of services that you find across Australia. But one of the unheralded developments which has occurred in recent times has been the growing importance of my electorate in the area of innovation, particularly in relation to health research and the digital economy.

Very quietly, we are seeing more and more businesses emerge in North Sydney, which are working in areas like health research—for example, recently, I visited a firm called Saluda, which is doing groundbreaking work in relation to the treatment of chronic pain, and other companies like Phebra and NewGenics, who are leading groundbreaking research in relation to cancer. Similarly in the area of the digital economy, we are home to major firms like Vodafone, the NBN, ASX's technology centre, 3P Learning, which as any parent will know, is the parent company for Mathletics, which is helping children around the world learn maths and literacy skills.

I am committed to promoting my electorate as a centre for innovation. For that reason, I recently established the North Sydney Innovation Network, which is promoting North Sydney as a great centre for innovation in our nation. I want to congratulate all those businesses who are working so hard to make our electorate a vibrant centre for innovation in our country.