What role did government policy play in Australian startups?

“I would be, I think I would be best to talk to other policy people in that context, as opposed to telling a person that runs a, you know, that's starting a startup what to do. My advice would be, where I'd wanna make a contribution is to other policymakers that government is important, Like, totally understand that we, there is a school of thought about, you know, government needs to get out of the way, reduce regulation, reduce red tape, blue tape, green tape to enable a business to thrive. And that is important. But I do think when you're trying to create an ecosystem, and this is certainly experienced in Queensland, is that, you know, when you have investment in people, in skills, in places where it can fast-track innovation, then that actually does matter and it does make a difference. And, you know, when we, when we started our policy setting, Advance Queensland, in 2015, Startup Masterhead Queensland, you know, as a laggard state, you know, injecting $1 billion, clear pathways of support and dialogue with the sector from government also matters. That's how you can reduce those barriers. That's how you can ensure that any funding that the government commits actually goes to programs and support at the time that a startup needs it, not when government thinks that the startup needs it. So my advice would be that if we want to continue to see this jobs growth, and I think the potential is huge, if we want to see Australian businesses make it in global marketplaces, then— Yeah. Government has a role. I don't think it should be hands-off. I think it should be hands-on, but it has to be hands-on in the right way. So I don't think it's a space where at this stage government should exit the field left. I think that government should absolutely be collaborating with the sector, listening to startups' journeys, listening to their advice and experience, and using that to support more startups to thrive here in our country.”

“Government has a few different levers to pull, um, and one of the most important levers it can pull is strategic funding for emerging technology fields. It's a complete myth that government has no involvement in helping create markets. It absolutely does. The bedrock of almost all the technology markets has some element of government funding in the very early days, and so Some of those levers it can pull is around commercialization funding for what, you know, you might call platform technologies. Very, very important. And those types of funding has to be very big, has to be very strategic, and has to essentially look to pick winners. And that's a complicated thing to ask for government, and not always, they don't always realize that, especially in a country like Australia where government policy and technology innovation has been a constant flip-flop. And so you don't have the same agencies you might want to see in Australia which can keep a consistent investment of dollars into consistent industry verticals, right? And so that's a big problem in Australia because every government that comes in every year flip-flops and changes. And so where I think it could do a much better job is supporting a consistent agenda over multiple different governments. And that's really difficult because it needs to have an agency. And that's what we lack in Australia. We see it in some areas in terms of research funding, like the ISA, but like we should see more of that strategic sort of investment. The other area that we need to see more investment is defense, and that's changing as well. So defense have a big role to play. And then the other areas are sort of what I call sort of general incentives, right?”