Page 150 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 26 February 2014
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government for leadership and support at times, our community expects us to be lobbying for the same treatment from the federal coalition government. In my discussions with the Prime Minister to date, he has confirmed that he does not want to cause economic harm to the territory and that he will work with us to make sure that support is provided. We will see what the budget brings.
DR BOURKE (Ginninderra) (11.22): As the Chief Minister just talked about, a couple of weeks ago a Canberra company based here and born at the ANU was acquired by an American company for $76 million. The company, Lithicon, deals in digital imaging and estimation of fluids in rocks, which is of special interest in oil and gas exploration. Why Canberra and what has it got to do with this motion about supporting jobs? This company grew out of collaboration in world-leading research between ANU scientists with others from the University of NSW in 2009.
Why Canberra? Because here we have some of the world’s best scientists. We have some of the best programs to support research and innovation and bring the ideas to the commercial world. The company began life as Digitalcore and was assisted in its evolution by the ACT government’s Canberra business development fund and the ANU connect ventures discovery translation and equity fund—a hand up, not a handout. The company now exports its services around the world. It employs 18 Canberrans in a new field of expertise building on the intellectual strength we have in clever Canberra, with the best educated population of any Australian capital city. A large share of the money from the company sale is coming back here to the ANU.
It is a story that illustrates the success of Canberra businesses in creating jobs and this government’s commitment to business innovation support and investing in our strengths, notably knowledge-based fields, to create further jobs and to diversify our economy.
Today my federal colleague, Andrew Leigh, is launching Peter Dawson’s new book, Creative Capital: Bureaucrats, Boffins, Businessmen. Indeed, Andrew Leigh wrote the forward to the book that Mr Smyth borrowed from in his adjournment speech last night. I will quote some of that forward too. Mr Leigh says:
Ask a non-Canberran what words they associate with “Canberra”, and it’s London to a brick that they’ll come back with “politics” or “government”. Yet as those of us who live here know, this is a city that’s considerably more than the seat of government. If I had to devise a single notion that sums up smart bureaucrats, connected academics and innovative start-ups, it would be that Canberra is an “ideas city”.
Mr Leigh continues:
Beyond getting education right, government should be modest about its ability to redress problems such as Australia’s comparatively low patenting rates (by OECD standards). To the credit of the Gallagher Government, it has trialed a variety of solutions, including the newly formed innovation space Entry 29. Like a good start-up in the private sector, it’s wise for governments not to think they have all the answers in solving a challenging problem such as the disconnect between Canberra’s universities and local businesses. Experiment, experiment, experiment.
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