Job Creation

Ms LUETHEN (King) (14:15): My question is to the Premier. Can the Premier update the house on how the government is delivering more jobs?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:15): I thank the member for King for her excellent question. She is concerned with the big issues for the people of South Australia. The number one issue is creating more jobs for the next generation—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —and growing our economy, and we are working harder than ever before to grow our economy and to create more jobs. Yesterday, I was down at Lot Fourteen. I was there with my friend and colleague the Minister for Innovation and Skills in South Australia.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: We were very proud to be officially opening the new incubator and accelerator on this site. Earlier this year, we went out to the market to look at who could best run the incubator and accelerator on this site, and earlier this year we announced that Stone and Chalk were selected. Of course, they run the incubator and accelerator up in Sydney. They also run one in Melbourne. In fact, the incubator and accelerator on Lot Fourteen will be larger than the one that they run in Sydney and double the size of the one that they run in Melbourne. We look forward to them replicating the excellent job creation that they delivered for New South Wales, and are now delivering into Victoria, here in South Australia.

We want to see more businesses created. We want to see more jobs created in South Australia and we have every confidence that this will be achieved. In the first round, there were more than 200 companies that applied to come into the incubator and accelerator. This is not a co-working space. We have to make sure that what we are selecting to go in there are companies and ideas that have the very best chance of being successful businesses and creating sustainable employment in South Australia.

In the first cohort, 29 of those companies that submitted their application were successful. That represents around 105 employees who are now on that site—100 of the 600 desks are now occupied on that site and they join a growing innovation precinct on Lot Fourteen. In December this year, the Australian Space Agency will open their doors on that site. We know that next month, MIT, the most successful number one ranked university in the world, will open their Living Lab on that site.

The SmartSat CRC will be opening their doors in December of this year, and of course the Australian Institute for Machine Learning, which is a collaboration between the University of Adelaide and also Lockheed Martin, will be opened, and I'm already looking forward to the opening of the Australian Cyber Collaboration Centre next year. This is a massively growing sector and the government is investing $8.9 million into the establishment of the Australian Cyber Collaboration Centre.

It will be a great opportunity to have another surge in creating jobs because that is our number one priority. We want to see more South Australians staying here. They finish school, they finish university and we want to see them staying here and that is why we have been working so hard on this. We have created around 15,000 jobs since we came to government. That is almost 1,000 jobs per month. In fact, if we look at the last 12 months, we see that the jobs created in South Australia are approximately double what they have been over the last decade, but there is still much more work to be done.

The Australian economy is facing some headwinds, there is no doubt about that. We are continuing to work in a positive, collaborative way with the Morrison Coalition government in Canberra to deliver for the people of our state. It is very important that we continue to do that. We have put the people of South Australia first so that we can continue to create those jobs that we need so desperately in South Australia. I was so delighted when I looked at that net interstate migration figure again recently, which saw a massive fall in the number of people leaving South Australia to get jobs interstate. Much work has been done and much has been achieved, but there is much more work to be done into the future.

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Lee is called to order. The leader has the call.