Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Forty-eight hours after the budget was delivered here that made a number of references to start-ups, entrepreneurialism, innovation and small business let us go to those in the know and see what they say about this budget. Rui Rodrigues, the Managing Partner of Tank Stream Ventures, said:

Overall, it’s positive that the government has mentioned startups twice in the budget but specific incentives are still lacking or aren’t applicable to the sector, so in the end it’s difficult to look at the glass half full with this budget.

That is what they are saying in relation to what we have seen delivered.

That is not the only criticism that has been levelled at this budget. It pretends it has a focus on small business, jobs and growth, but the reality is otherwise. We are confronted with a very serious challenge. Not only do we have more joblessness now than in the global financial crisis but we are at risk of being loaded up with the weight of that joblessness well into the future. We are under massive pressure to change on two counts. Mining is not delivering the wealth and, importantly, not delivering the jobs that we once experienced. For example, liquefied natural gas facilities that took over 35,000 people to build are now being operated by fewer than 5,000 people. Our GDP growth has taken a one percentage point hit because as construction projects end they require fewer people. This means that joblessness is up and there are fewer jobs around for people to go into. On top of that technology is wiping out manual and entry level jobs. There are fewer jobs that require little or no training. So we have in our own country this challenge with the economy changing and also technology having an impact.

We need to see whether this government is thinking ahead. What is its jobs plan? The problem is there is not much of a jobs plan in place. Other countries get this. For example, the UK is focused on finance or Fintech, New Zealand has coinvestment programs and entrepreneurs visas to generate the type of innovation required there, Singapore has $14 billion put aside for a national framework for innovation and entrepreneurship, and South Korea has a $100 million coinvestment program. They are all changing their economies. In the US they have seen that jobs grow 25 times faster in the tech sector than in any other sector in the country and they are making massive investments. They lead the world in terms of innovation and entrepreneurship. Small businesses and start-ups got big mentions in this budget but there is no plan backing up the words. They are making it up as they go along. We have to work now.

Again, let us look at what the start-up sector is saying. They said:

… in today’s globally connected digital world, our education and training systems need to place a far higher priority on the Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths … skills, including Information and Communication Technology … skills.

That is from the Australian Computer Society's Andrew Johnson.

This budget cuts billions of dollars out of skills training and cuts nearly 20 per cent out of vocational education and training, as the member for Cunningham indicated. Where are we getting ready for the jobs of the future? We are not. Each new technology based job creates five additional jobs in other sectors, according to Enrico Moretti, Professor of Economics at the University of California in Berkeley. We are not prepared for it at all so we are under pressure to change. We risk being left behind. We have no plan to generate jobs. Only one job was being thought of in this budget—that is the Prime Minister's job. That was the only target for this budget. The only target for this budget was to get both the Prime Minister and the Treasurer through, but we cannot afford that kind of short-term thinking. We need to be able to think ahead about what is going to generate jobs for the people I represent in my area and the members for Greenway, Wakefield, Gellibrand and Griffith represent. We are all concerned about what is going to happen to jobs in the future but there is absolutely nothing here in terms of investing in schools and education and there is very little thinking in advance about what we need to do to keep our country ahead while others are stealing the march on us.

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