Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In the past months, we have seen opposite something of a corporate hostile takeover. I use the term advisedly. In the sector that I have spent the majority of my career working in, the ICT and technology sector, we have a bit of a passion for disruption and for innovations that do things in a different way, turn the show upside down and make things happen in a completely new way. That is not what has happened across from us over the previous months. What we have seen is a takeover where new faces are sitting on top of an established organisation. It is a reorg, and the marketing division has been sacked. We have seen a new salesman appointed, but unfortunately for the Australian innovation system the products division has remained untouched. The R&D remains cobwebbed from neglect.

As the member for Scullin noted, we are at one in this place in the importance of innovation, but it pains us to see the lack of interest from those opposite, because fundamentally innovation underpins productivity growth in this country, but innovation can be fetishised in this building. Frankly, it is something that is talked about by far more people in this building than actually understand it. At its most basic level, innovation is about doing things that we are already doing more efficiently or doing completely new things. Start-ups are an important part of the innovation ecosystem, but the Australian innovation system is much broader. It relies on every Australian worker having the skills that they need to identify opportunities to do things differently. It relies on every small business being staffed by employees who have the ability to spot opportunities for doing things in a new way. That is why it is so disappointing to see the lack of action from the Turnbull-Abbott-Turnbull coalition on ensuring that these skills are being spread throughout the Australian economy.

Some of the most important skills that we need to teach all Australians at the moment is the set of skills that is referred to in the ICT sector as computational thinking. Computational thinking is a concept that was championed by a Microsoft executive some years ago. It is not a radical concept. It is something that the conservative Prime Minister in the UK, David Cameron, has mandated that kids learn from their first year of schooling in the United Kingdom. It is something that the Estonian government mandates at all levels of schooling in Estonia. But it is something that is completely absent, regrettably, from the Australian curriculum and the Australian education system. The way to understand the importance of computational thinking is that it is not, as the former troglodyte Prime Minister described it, teaching nine-year-olds how to code. We do not want nine-year-old's writing Python scripts. We do want all Australian kids, from primary school through to high school, students at university and new workers in the workplace understanding the basic literacies of the new digital era that we live in. We need our Australian workforce to not only understand how to use technology but to understand the way it works at a fundamental enough level for them to use it for problem-solving and for the purposes of innovation. They need to understand skills like algorithmic thinking, informatics, data analysis and statistical inference—skills that are not prioritised in our education sector at the moment.

The way to think about this metaphorically is that it is the difference between being able to ride a tricycle and a bicycle. At the moment, Australians are fantastic at riding tricycles. Australian workers can pick up a new piece of technology and work out how to use it very quickly. Unfortunately, we are not investing in teaching them the additional skills of learning how to ride a bike, learning the new skills that will enable them to get to new places and use technologies to solve problems and change the way that they do things. Unfortunately, not only has this skill been neglected by those opposite but we are going in the wrong direction. The new minister for innovation, 'the fixer', in his previous role as the Minister for Education, presided over a review of the Australian curriculum that recommended the removal of the teaching of digital technology skills from the Australian curriculum. The little that we are doing at the moment is apparently too much for those opposite. The corporate hostile takeover could not tolerate a bit of disruption.

Thankfully, Labor understands the importance of this. In our last budget-in-reply, we committed to ensuring that computational thinking will be taught in all primary schools and schools across the country. We committed to upskilling 25,000 primary and secondary school teachers in STEM skills so that they can teach those skills. We offered 25,000 scholarships to STEM university graduates to help them continue their studies and become STEM teachers, pushing these important innovative skills throughout the Australian economy and throughout the small businesses that we rely on for this innovation, including the workers that will do this innovation. We have committed to reversing the 20 per cent cuts to university funding made by those opposite, creating a smart investment fund and developing smart financing initiatives. In the tech sector, you say, 'Disrupt or be disrupted.' This government will be disrupted. (Time expired)

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