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

If a country could open up nearly half a million new jobs through one sector alone, you would think that you would seize that opportunity and try and generate that job growth. If that sector could contribute four per cent of GDP, over $100 billion—and that is up 0.4 per cent from what it is doing now—you would think it would be supported, especially in a climate where the jobs and the income being generated by one sector in particular, mining, are disappearing or shrinking before our eyes, and there is urgency: how do we actually generate new jobs and regear the economy to make sure that the next generation of Australians coming through will have jobs? Yet we do not have any sense of a national mission to regear the economy and prepare it for the jobs that are around the corner. You would think that we would accept the need for that, you would think that we would prepare for it, but that is not what we see at all. We see the numbers and the types of jobs diminishing.

To respond to the parliamentary secretary, who said, 'We don't know the shape of those jobs in the future': we actually do. The sector that is thinking about this, the tech sector, is desperate to see government think about it, and it released a report last month. StartupAUS, which is made up of entrepreneurs who are focused on this space, are saying that they are frustrated by a government that is not listening to them and not responding. They have all the jobs there. They can see what is needed to create those jobs and, importantly, get people ready for those jobs—and there are people ready to back that up.

For example, when I visited Melbourne last week, I saw a group that has been around since 2010, Sonoa Health, that is creating scores of jobs there related to tapping into the amazing amount of information that exists in the healthcare space to be able to tailor it to individuals. They are doing it right now. They have people like John Stewart, who turned his back on a lucrative career in investment banking and has said he is prepared to put his own money into this enterprise and to do it right now. When you see the jobs that are being created, you realise the truism that exists in this sector—that is, for every one job that is created in the tech sector, five more are created elsewhere. For example, in the US, the tech sector has a jobs multiplier, a phenomenal jobs multiplier: 25 times more jobs are created in the tech sector than in any other. So what is being done to support that? You have to focus on what you can do to boost talent and what you can do to boost capital.

This budget did nothing in that regard. It took Bill Shorten to actually say, 'If we've got these skills shortages, what will we do to invest in skills; what will be done to support people?' So, what we want to do is invest in STEM skills—and this is where the coding element is important, as referred to by the shadow minister and, in particular, the opposition leader—to get young people thinking early about what they can do by introducing coding in schools. What did the coalition do? They took it out of the national curriculum. They talk about the importance of coding, through their communications minister, but their education minister stops those skills being acquired.

We talk about opening up new avenues for capital. We were the ones who put forward a $500 million fund to be able to co-invest and support the capital needs of start-ups in this country—nothing like that from those opposite. New avenues are opening up for capital through crowd-funding, yet those opposite sat on an independent report that gives a road map to providing crowd-sourced equity funding. There is nothing there.

We have a combination, for example, of 20,000 Australians working right now in Silicon Valley. They are there because there is not enough opportunity here and there is not enough capital being circulated here, and those are the things that we do need to focus on to build the skills and the jobs of the future. For those opposite who think it might be too hard, it is worth bearing this in mind: Silicon Alley, New York, has in 2015, for the first time, edged out California in the total number of start-up funding applications that have been generated. They are doing better in New York now than in Silicon Valley. Why? Because the state of New York and the city of New York have focused on this area. Where manufacturing is changing there and not generating jobs—similar to the types of challenges we have—they have backed up the tech sector and they have seen companies grow and they have seen economic activity flourish. It can be done if you are committed to doing it.

The issue is: is this government prepared and committed to supporting these future jobs for the next generation of Australians? The answer is no. (Time expired)

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