Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party, Minister for Superannuation, Financial Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Small for this timely and important question. Today I was very pleased to welcome the launch of the Tech Council of Australia. This is a new advocacy group promoting the growth of Australia's digital economy and seeking to attract investment to Australia and create jobs across a range of critical Australian industries. The new body is backed by leaders in the Australian tech sector, including Atlassian, AfterPay, Canva and SafetyCulture as well as tech investors such as Blackbird and Square Peg and multinationals such as Microsoft and Google.

Today's launch was accompanied by the release of a study that was commissioned by the Tech Council and undertaken by Accenture that highlights that our tech sector is now the third-biggest industry, by value, in Australia and it's also the seventh-biggest employer in Australia, with 861,000 workers—one in 16 Australians—employed in the industry. The report also finds that the sector generated $167 billion in output in the financial year 2021, and the growth in this sector is only going to accelerate. Since 2005, tech sector jobs have grown by 66 per cent compared to an average jobs growth of 27 per cent across the economy, and the tech sector generated 65,000 jobs during the pandemic alone.

The Morrison government is ambitious for Australia's economic future and is committed to supporting and accelerating this growth. We are a government keen to meet the demands and take advantage of the opportunities presented by the digital economy, and that's why we welcome the collaboration with the tech sector to meet the Tech Council's ambitious goal of one million tech related jobs by 2025.