Sinodinos Announces Digital Review
First 5000 | September 20, 2017
Senator Sinodinos has released a consultation paper on the Government’s new Digital Economy Strategy, which is due for release in the New Year. The paper highlights the need for improved digital infrastructure and business capability, better digital skills and greater social inclusion. The Strategy should ensure Australia benefits from digital transformation and gains jobs and business through economic change, rather than losing out to automation and foreign competition.
Addressing an AFR Innovation Summit in Sydney, Senator Sinodinos proclaimed that Australia can “become a world leader in digital innovation” to “boost the Australian economy by $140 billion to $250 billion over the next eight years,” but admitted that the spectre of digital transformation disturbs his sleep at night. He stressed his ambition to “nail the digital economy” by tackling issues from industrial use of the internet and smart city infrastructure to cyber security.
The Senator assured his audience that the Coalition will embrace the opportunities afforded by digital disruption, rather than bow to protectionist pressures. However he stressed the need to secure public support for change and avoid digital disruption becoming “a new frontier for warfare over industrial relations.” He therefore emphasised his desire to work with “the grain of market forces” to facilitate rather than delay disruption, but “in a way which helps to look after people”. However digital disruption should not become “an excuse for further re-regulation of the labour market” to “maximize the benefits of the change.”
While Senator Sinodinos described himself as “an economic rationalist and a technological optimist,” he accepted that the Turnbull government has abandoned ‘big picture’ visions of economic innovation to concentrate on the merits of individual projects. The administration’s initial trumpeting of innovation as a major plank of policy backfired at the last Federal election and the government is still to convince the public that change will enrich, rather than impoverish, their employment prospects.
Material for this piece was sourced from http://www.innovationaus.com/2017/09/Sinodinos-takes-some-time-out
