Job Creation

Mr MURRAY (Davenport) (14:46): My question is to the Premier.

Members interjecting:

Mr MURRAY: Just listen up. Can the Premier update the house on how the development of future industries is creating jobs for our state?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:46): With pleasure, and I thank the member for Waite for his excellent question. He like all of those on this side of the house—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Reynell is warned.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —is very concerned about growing the size of our economy and creating more jobs for our next generation, and we are working harder than ever to do exactly and precisely that. We are obviously looking at some of our traditional sectors, like mining and agriculture, tourism and international students, but we also have our focus on future industries for this state, and today I had the great pleasure of speaking at the Defence Industry Cyber Summit, a national cyber summit being held in South Australia.

Most recent statistics say that Australia will need another 18,000 cyber professionals in Australia by 2026. This is a great opportunity. Many people who look at cyber actually think of the threat. Sure, it is a threat. There are always attacks on data in the government sector, in the private sector and on individuals, but the flipside of the threat is the opportunity to develop products and companies who are going to address this growing threat, and that's precisely what we are going to do.

The South Australian government, on behalf of the taxpayers, is investing $8.9 million to establish the Australian cyber collaboration centre on Lot Fourteen. This is a best practice centre dealing with the critical nodes that we have already—the AustCyber critical nodes that we have in South Australia—of defence and small business, two incredibly important sectors of our national economy, but we will be looking at other sectors as well.

Today, at the Defence Industry Cyber Summit—a sell-out event—it was a great pleasure for me to welcome the Hon. Larry Hogan, who is the Governor of Maryland. Some of you might recall that I have spoken about Governor Hogan before, whom I met when I visited the United States earlier this year. I was over for the US-Australia defence dialogue, but I made a detour to go to Maryland because they are the undisputed cyber capital of the US. He was very generous in reciprocating and coming here to speak at our summit today. He spoke specifically about the opportunity of developing a skilled workforce for fantastic jobs and the transformation that has occurred in Maryland.

But, more than that, we felt very honoured today that South Australia was able to sign an MOU with Maryland so that we can work collaboratively in looking at some of these incredible opportunities in the cyber sector. It was a great honour to have the Governor of Maryland here. He is here for another day before he heads off interstate, but we welcome him here to South Australia.

We are also looking at other new future industries. Sir, as you would be aware, earlier this week we launched our Hydrogen Action Plan, which built on the work that was done by the previous government with their hydrogen pathway. We supported that and now we are developing it through 20 key actions because we believe this is also a great opportunity for our state. It's a clean source of stored fuel energy that we can deploy. It is of great interest, in particular in our region, in both Japan and Korea and they are opportunities that we will continue to look for.

We are looking at not just future industries around tech but also the creative industries. In this area, I would like to commend the Minister for Innovation and Skills, who looks after the screen sector. He is passionate about the screen sector. He has been to auditions. He hasn't got a part yet, but he's still passionate. The Mortal Kombat film in South Australia is not just about acting but about some of the post-production work, some of the great jobs that are being created and the $70 million injection into our economy from the Mortal Kombat film.