The 3rd annual Parliamentary tech showcase in Canberra highlighted 50+ innovative tech offerings, connecting government and leading industry players with the shared goal to reach towards 1.2 million tech workers by 2030.
Exiting the halls leaving Parliament House in Canberra on Monday night, walking by former prime ministers portraits, I couldn’t help imagine trying to explain to them in their era what 52 leading Aussie & Kiwi innovative tech companies in 2024 look like, as a part of the 3rd annual Parliamentary tech showcase led by the Australian Tech Council to welcome in the new financial year.
Picture having a bbq and beer with Bob Hawke trying to explain quantum computing such as Q-CTRL, cultivated non-animal protein based foods by Vow or rocket company Gilmour space creating orbital launch capabilities, I suspect he’d look at you with a quiet reservation before reaching down for his yard glass celebrating his legacy of the National Economic Summit from back in 1983, which brought together business and industrial leaders together with politicians and trade union leaders.
The Tech Council with the Federal Government has a shared goal of 1.2 million people in tech by 2030. Momentum continues as we close towards 1 million, currently at 935,000 tech workers today, policy director Kate Jones jokingly said to recently appointed CEO Damian Kassabgi maybe that this target is now way too conservative.
Allegra Spender highlighted that tech industry contributes 8.6% of national GDP today and growing. In an economy where I am seeing early stage and scale-up tech companies that we work with struggling to achieve growth targets as buyer behaviour and budgets for spending tighten across the board - along with access to capital has tightened following access to cheap money of COVID chapter, set amongst an economy with rising immigration and cost of living pressures providing a glass roof over realities of a likely already here recession.
The government needs the tech industry to fire as a growth industry. We now have 100+ tech companies with valuation of over $100 million, with an active startup community doing their utmost to join them.
Ed Husic MP, the Minister for Industry and Science, spoke passionately about the achievements and potential of the tech industry, with the aim to sharpen up how we work, to be more efficient to unlock and ultimately grow new jobs.
To support this, the Federal Government is placing big bets on quantum computing, with $1bn dedicated to invest in critical tech via the National Reconstruction Fund, which covers AI, quantum and robotics, and in addition have invested nearly $500m in AI related activity across government.
The oxymoron here is whilst AI is unlocking new job growth potential, is also absorbing and changing current roles as we know them. We collaborated on a recent AFR article which highlighted that Tesla chief executive Elon Musk told British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last November we would eventually reach a point with AI “where no job is needed”.
Conversely, newly released analysis this week by the Tech Council of Australia (TCA), Microsoft, LinkedIn and Workday VNDLY showed that AI could result in the creation of an extra 200,000 jobs in Australia by 2030 and grow the economy by up to $115 billion, if achievable makes Kate’s light hearted humour that 1.2 million jobs by 2030.
At this week’s Canberra event, emerging AI ecosystem players were being showcased, such as Take2 who upskill people in prison how to code, KomplyAI - helping companies building AI tools to do it so safely and compliantly across jurisdictions and in complex regulatory environments amongst others.
Our current evolving question is that whilst we believe Ai can and will create new jobs, it does require significant focus towards upskilling/reskilling the existing workforce. We support Ada’s view “the most efficient way to grow the AI workforce is to educate our existing workforce. Most of our workforce is computer-literate and AI could be just an extension of the existing systems they are already using," said Ada Guan, CEO and Co-Founder of Rich Data Co. Therefore, maybe the government should look there to support, enable and accelerate the nation’s tech capabilities.
Whilst AI jobs are on the rise as above, the report also found Australians are rapidly adopting AI with over 84% of knowledge workers already using tools at work.
We suggest working out the problems you are trying to solve before signing up to everything all at once. Pick the “meatiest one” to solve first. Then explore how gen AI can help.
With a looming 5 year horizon to the 2030 target, where are these workers and where can they capitalise on this accelerated tech trend?
Last week the AI accelerator Build Club Y24 cohort was very warmly received in the market and expect it to continue to do so. There are rapidly developing new courses becoming available, and SXSW Sydney has a focus on enabling education into the tech sector to support.
What do and where does partnerships and ecosystems have to do with this? Well, everything is my answer which is why given our core focus we are watching and observing very closely as it plays out, not surprisingly faster and faster than the industry is moving.
When OpenAI launched, nearly every major global tech company launched with a *Powered by OpenAI* feature set, and now most leading industry players are building or have launched their own iterations.
Tech companies have existing roadmaps, resources and constraints so I cannot see many being able to stand up AI capabilities without partnering and collaborating with others. This is an industry shared goal to capitalise on the opportunity, AND equally mitigate the risk of misuse or foul play.
John Gallagher from Microsoft led his talk on how they are partnering closely with Tech Council, naturally their success is tied closely to riding this wave on a national level.
The cloud processors Microsoft, Google and Amazon Web Services all have active accelerator programs to help upcoming companies deploy and realise the benefits of gen AI, and many companies we are working with are taking advantage of these.
They’ve all got initiatives, incentives and motivations to encourage accelerated adoption, because they ultimately win if they can help companies bring it to life, the key being partnerships as the unlock.
And if you’re working in tech, we encourage you to consider how you can upskill/reskill and contribute to stay relevant, add value and help drive forwards the economic opportunity that a big island continent with a relevant small population on the other side can punch above their weight, and then maybe, just maybe as Ed Husic closed out his speech, countries can come to us rather than we turn to them.
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