Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: policy

  • Sydney’s Mayoral Tech Race – the ALP’s Linda Scott

    Sydney’s Mayoral Tech Race – the ALP’s Linda Scott

    A few weeks back I wrote about how the tech sector had become an issue in the Sydney Lord Mayoral election to be held on September 10.

    Following that post, I approached the four major candidates to get their policies on how Sydney can do better in attracting tech startups to the city. The idea was to get an overview published in one the major newspapers but sadly my pitches were ignored.

    However the issues raised are important to Sydney so over of the next few days I’ll publish each of the candidates’ responses to my questions along with any other conversations I’ve had with their teams.

    The first candidate we look at is Linda Scott, the Australian Labor Party candidate. Councillor Scott was elected to the City of Sydney Council in 2012 and is a researcher at The University of Sydney and lives in the inner city suburb of Newtown with her husband and two young children.

    “As a Labor Councillor, I moved that the City conduct a feasibility study into the possibilities for implementation of smart technologies for City infrastructure and services. The current Lord Mayor and her team voted against it, defeating the measure.

    I’ve also held a start up Roundtable for City of Sydney start ups with Labor Ministers Chris Bowen and Ed Husic to hear ideas for how every level of government can improve our support for the start up communities.”

    What are your policies relating to encouraging tech  startups?

    “As a Labor candidate for Lord Mayor, my Labor  team and I are committed to  delivering smart technology to the City’s infrastructure and services for the future.

    “From more efficient watering of our parks to parking to better planned traffic flows, the Internet of Things has the potential to revolutionise our City – and it’s an opportunity we can’t afford to miss.

    “We are committed to working with our start ups and universities to support  the continuation and creation of Tech  Startup  precincts, and will ensure planning policies foster these precincts.

    “Labor will also deliver a dedicated, City-owned work space to form part of a Tech  Startup  precinct and open up City spaces for tech startup networking events and will host an annual festival to promote Sydney as an international tech  startup  hub.

    “If elected, we will explore establishing dedicated innovation and commercialisation ‘landing pads’  with our sister cities, and neighbouring and regional councils here in New South Wales.

    “Labor  will also work to support the continuation and expansion of existing university-based hubs and accelerators in  the City of Sydney along with hosting an annual festival to promote coding among young people. “

    What do you see as Sydney’s strengths in this sector?

    “Our people. Sydney is a great global city, and rightly is the first port of call for international trade and investment. Many of our nation’s and the world’s major firms have their Australian headquarters based in Sydney.

    “We  have the critical mass  of creativity,  capital  and access to services  to provide fertile ground for tech startups.”

    What is Sydney not doing well at the moment?

    “The Lord Mayor has rejected Labor’s moves to embrace smart technology.  It’s time for change at the City of Sydney.

    “We also need more affordable space for start ups, and Labor is committed to delivering this.

    What are we doing well?

    “Sydney has great  hubs and accelerators that  Labor  will continue and expand where possible.”

    How do you see the City’s relations with state and Federal government affecting current efforts?

    “As a Labor Councillor, I already work closely with my state and federal colleagues and governments to ensure I secure what’s best for the City of Sydney. The state and federal governments have the financial strength and capabilities to assist the City in delivering its tech  startup strategies.

    “For example, a federal Labor  Government committed to create a 500 million dollar Smart Investment Fund and a nine million National Coding in Schools program – both measures I will continue to secure for the future.”

    Currently Victoria and Queensland are doing better at attracting businesses.  Should we do anything to counter that and, if so, what?

    “Sydney’s strength and appeal as a tech  startup  hub should be the size and diversity of creativity, capital and access services it can achieve.

    “With all the measures listed above, and working with stakeholders, Labor is committed to doing better for the future of our start ups.”

    How can Sydney compete globally against cities like Singapore, Shanghai and even Wellington?

    “Our City needs to continuously increase its exposure to new challenges and new ideas from around the world as well as at home.

    “Exploring opportunities for establishing innovation and commercialisation landing pads with sister cities around the world as well as neighbouring and regional councils  will be an important first step in that effort.

    “Most importantly, increasing the availability of affordable work space in the City of Sydney will also be critical, and attracting angel investors to Labor’s annual showcase event in the City.

    How does your tech industry policy fit in with other key Sydney employment sectors like the creative industries, financial services and education?

    “Labor is committed to the creation of a fun, fair, affordable and sustainable City for the future for all businesses and residents. “

    It’s hard to see the Labor Party getting a great deal of traction in the council elections, Scott herself only received ten percent of the mayoral vote when she ran for the 2012 election and was the only ALP councillor elected.

    The benefit though of the Labor ticket is that Scott’s positions fit nicely with her party’s state and Federal. However, given the party will remain in opposition at both levels for at least two and a half years – although nothing is certain in the farce that Australian Federal Politics has become, that co-ordination means little for the City of Sydney.

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  • Australia’s lost dreams of global champions

    Australia’s lost dreams of global champions

    One the notable things about the Australian economy is how most sectors are dominated by a handful of corporations.

    The concentration of Australia’s business power has its roots in the 1980s where the then Hawke Labor government decided the nation’s corporations couldn’t be globally competitive unless they had scale in the home markets, and so a wave of mergers and acquisitions started.

    An industry that was particularly problematic was telecommunications. At the time Hawke came to power in 1983 there were three government owned telcos; Telecom Australia that operated the domestic network and the Overseas Telecommunication Corporation which handled the nation’s global links along with a small satellite provider, Aussat, intended for remote access and some defense functions.

    David Havyatt at InnovationAus describes the late 1980s thinking that lead to Telecom and OTC being merged to become Telstra, the company that dominates the Australian telecommunications industry today.

    The then political troika of Prime Minister Bob Hawke, Treasurer Paul Keating and communications minister Kim Beazley decided allowing OTC and Telstra to merge would give the company global scale, as Havyatt quotes from a policy discussion around 1990.

    “A strong vertically integrated national carrier which is able to provide a one-stop-shop for Australia’s telecommunications services both domestically and internationally, providing economies of scale and scope and the prospect of a unified and enhanced international profile.”

    Despite the lofty ambitions and a few half hearted attempts to grow global business operations, a quarter century on sees Telstra’s international returns at an almost derisory level.

    Dodging global bullets

    One could argue that Telstra’s shareholders dodged a bullet – Canada’s Nortel followed the same path and, after early successes, failed spectacularly in the early 2000s.

    For Australians in general though, Telstra’s insular focus has been a disaster as maintenance and investments were deferred to make the company’s yields more attractive and the Howard government’s compounding the Labor party’s mistakes in fully privatising the business without breaking its monopoly power.

    Which lead Australia into the folly of the National Broadband Network – while the original intention of investing in the telecommunication sector and breaking Telstra’s lock on the industry was a good idea and supported by this writer –  it quickly morphed into a massive waste of money and remains so today. If anything, the NBN will only increase Telstra’s market power while delivering more expensive services to the nation.

    Missed opportunities

    The tale of regulatory mis-steps and dashed political hopes illustrates the failure of Australia’s ‘go big, go global’ policies of the 1980s. Today, Australia is more dependent on mining exports than it has been in more than 50 years while manufacturing and services have actually fallen since the 1980s as a proportion of outward trade.

    Australian exports by sector: Department of Foreign affairs and trade
    Australian exports by sector: Department of Foreign affairs and trade

    Notable in the above graph is how in the 1990s it appeared the ‘go big, go global’ was working but by the turn of the century, the combination of the mining boom and the nation’s business elites – particularly in banking, insurance, retail and media – had starting looking at exploiting their domestic markets rather than competing internationally.

    While there have been successes such as Westfield in shopping centres, Lend Lease in construction and Brambles in logistics management, the bulk of Australia’s corporate leaders are inwardly focused on extracting maximum revenue from their captive local companies.

    Global ownership

    Increasingly, those dominant companies aren’t even Australian. The brewing industry is a good example where locally owned beer producers make up less than ten percent of the market dominated by New Zealand’s Lion Nathan and British based global conglomerate SAB Miller. Australians, it seems, cannot even brew their own beer any more.

    Australia’s managers have been the greatest beneficiaries from the nation’s failed business policies as it’s insulated them from global competition, life is good when you’re the biggest fish in a tiny pond.

    While good for managers, the lack of business diversity competitiveness and insular focus leaves Australia’s economy deeply exposed. The failure of the 1980’s grand vision where Australia developed a cohort of globally leading businesses is one that will be regretted by future generations as they pay higher prices for poorer products.

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