Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Industry and Science) Share this | Hansard source

It's a great pleasure to follow the member for Swan, who I would like to just emphasise—having worked with her prior to her election and now, obviously, as the member for Swan—has a deep interest in terms of turning ideas into reality and being able to see firms grow in her electorate. They are leading-edge firms in her area and also some of the young talent in the university sector that we've had the opportunity to meet. We visited Murdoch University recently, where there was a great robotics group. It's the energy and the ideas of the next generation that we really want to be able to tap into. Specifically, what we are proposing in the Education Legislation Amendment (Startup Year and Other Measures) Bill will enable that to occur, but at scale.

We experienced, obviously, through the course of the pandemic, enormous pressure being placed on businesses, forcing them to see if they could adapt. In some cases, unfortunately we lost businesses. We need to regenerate and to build businesses back. We need to see them on a sustainable footing, using new ideas and commercialising concepts that young people may have developed in university, seeing those early-stage innovators that have a reputation for being great job creators. A lot of early-stage firms create, within the space of 12 months, a phenomenal number of jobs for their size. We need to have this kind of business-building program, and that's exactly what we are trying to do through this bill, the Startup Year bill. We want to ensure that we provide a platform where students who want to extend their time at university get the guidance of an accelerator or an incubator to develop an idea, and get guidance from people and from mentors—be they from within the accelerator or incubator or from industry—to be able to determine how to seek out future capital to help them grow. Importantly—and this is the big thing about this bill—this bill is sending an important signal. It's telling young Australians that we need their effort, we need their energy, and the Australian government values their building a business. That's the big signal that this bill sends. We want to build new businesses that can grow, scale up and contribute to the Australian economy.

We know from previous Treasury reporting that we could definitely do a lot better on business dynamism. We had pressures through the pandemic, as I referenced earlier. We do need to address that. We need young people, and it may also be mature-age students who have gone through university and who also seek to grow their businesses. That's exactly what this bill will help enable. I champion—and I was certainly a very big supporter of this concept when in opposition, and we were keen to see this brought to life here—a pilot program, which this bill will provide for, for the first year, to enable up to potentially 2,000 final-year undergraduate, postgraduate and recent graduate students to go on and create their own firms, if we get this up and running. Again, it's 2,000 HELP-style loans created for students that could potentially create 2,000 new firms. And if they themselves put people on, you can see the multiplier effect starting to be brought to life right there in our economy, enabling those students to participate in those programs.

Supporting startup creation and entrepreneurial skill sets obviously has a part to play in growing productivity and incomes and building a workforce with the skills and capabilities to adapt as the economy evolves into the future. Following the feedback we got through the consultations, the first-year pilot that I referenced earlier will be delivered to test aspects of program design, engage student demand, assess providers' capacity to deliver the program and enable unis, especially those in regional Australia and those with newer innovation and accelerator ecosystems, extra time to develop and accredit Startup Year programs.

Again, I come back to this point about young firms and jobs growth. This stat is very important: on average, across OECD countries, young firms account for approximately 20 per cent of employment and create almost half of all new jobs. In Australia, startups have had a high impact on the creation of new jobs, and we want to support that growth. The Tech Council of Australia estimates that new tech startups can contribute 30,000 new jobs and $7 billion in value by 2030. So, we want to back Australian know-how. We want to foster an environment where ideas can be supported and commercialised. We want to stimulate entrepreneurship, innovation and technology to help Australians to develop startup ideas. We want to accelerate jobs growth and economic productivity through the creation of these new firms, particularly through universities.

My friend the Minister for Education has detailed some of the changes in terms of the bill itself—the more mechanical or detailed elements of the legislative changes that will be made. But I do want to emphasise, as the Minister for Industry and Science, that where I've had an opportunity to visit our unis, particularly—and I'm conscious of this, given your background, Madam Deputy Speaker Chesters, in regional Australia—outside the major capital cities, we do have a bigger role to play and a lot of work to do in supporting the ambition that exists in those areas to grow and diversify those economies, to build manufacturing capabilities, such as the types of things we're doing with the NRF, to be able to provide that growth capital. We're doing the same in many respects here to provide a form of capital to help new firms evolve. And as a government we're looking at everything, from the growth of new early-stage innovators—seeing them along the technology readiness; they will start to grow—trying to provide the support when they hit what is described as the valley of death in those TRLs, with the NRF at the other end of this to be able to, again, provide that growth capital and, importantly, all along the way sending signals that this is going to be important long term for the good of the country.

As I often say, innovation is not just about making a buck; it's about making a difference. By that, I mean some of the things that great Australians have done, the ideas that they've had, that have improved quality of life, helped neighbourhoods and communities in terms of the way that they live and exist, create jobs and provide people an opportunity to make a contribution and grow the community and economy, are really important.

We've seen that in some of the great things that have been done, from the invention of ultrasound, which came out of the CSIRO, through to the invention of the HPV vaccine. The HPV vaccine, developed here in this country, has helped see a huge drop of 63 per cent in the rate of cervical cancer for women. If women have been vaccinated in their teenage years, there is a 90 per cent chance to avoid HPV related cancers that has seen women say early goodbyes to their families, their children and their loved ones. We have prevented that. We have improved their quality of life through an Australian idea that led to that vaccine. We need to see more of that applied at scale, which is what we want to do. This bill, if I may commend it to the House, is about sending the signal that we value the ideas particularly of our young Australians, putting those ideas to work to create new firms and to improve the economy and national wellbeing. If we can see that start from this it will be a great thing for the nation. I'm very, very supportive of that.

If I may end on this point: I note the presence of the member for Reid. Again, when we're talking about the value of ideas, it was terrific to go to her electorate to launch the consultations around the revitalisation of the national science priorities. We did that at Burwood Girls High School. It was terrific. We went around and saw young science students engaged in a range of activities where, in particular, there is massive under-representation from women and other under-represented groups in our STEM community. It was incredibly inspiring to see the care and commitment shown at Burwood Girls High School. I fully understand why the member for Reid was so keen for us to launch the consultations there. Again, if we can see those students progress to university, be able to go on and build their own firm—these are the types of things. Government investment, in particular working with the private sector and our universities, can help transform lives for the better not just for the people involved but for the people whose lives are touched by great Australian ideas and know-how.

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