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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-03-01 Daily Xml
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INNOVATE SA

Mr MARSHALL (Norwood) (15:26): I rise to speak on the impending closure of Innovate SA. This government has gone to great lengths to talk about innovation, in fact it has gone to such lengths recently that it has renamed one of its departments the Department for Manufacturing, Innovation, Trade, Resources and Energy. So, we have gone through a very expensive process of re-jigging all of the signage, the letterheads and all the paperwork within that office to put in the word 'innovation'.

We have had the Premier and the minister talking in the media and at trade conferences, saying to people, 'Innovation is in our DNA.' They have talked about the importance of innovation in terms of driving industry in South Australia, they have talked about innovation in terms of creating jobs for future South Australians, but how have they actually performed? The only agency with responsibility for driving innovation in South Australia is Innovate SA, which is domiciled within DMITRE. It was announced last Monday that this would be closed at the end of this financial year. So, despite the rhetoric, the government has failed to live up to its commitments.

Let us have a look at a little bit of the history of Innovate SA. Innovate SA was first opened—are you ready for this—on October of 2009. It brought together a variety of different functions which existed in other agencies within the government at the time: the Venture Capital Board, a range of education programs operated within the old department of trade and economic development, industry assistance programs (I want to talk about those in a moment), diagnostic programs and work that was done to assist SMEs to identify opportunities and grow their business, and general networking and support.

So, it was opened in October 2009 and guess when the funding was pulled? September 2010. You do not have to be Einstein to work that out. Eleven months after the agency was opened it was slated for closure. Importantly, when it was announced in the September 2010 budget, the minister stated that despite the government pulling the funding it was going to be the responsibility of the department of trade and economic development to look at alternatives for funding this important key organisation.

In the opposition we thought, 'Here we go, this is a government which is pulling its own funding, but don't worry, they are going to charge their officers with the responsibility of finding alternative funding.' Well, they failed. Last week, an email was sent out to about 6,500 on their database letting us all know that the government would not be finding the money and that this agency would indeed close on 30 June.

Before making that final decision, the government called upon Thinker in Residence, Göran Roos, to look at the importance of Innovate SA as a key agency in South Australia. I am told by many people that that report strongly recommended that Innovate SA be continued. Unfortunately, the government refuses to release this report. This is typical of this government. It likes to make big announcements. It likes to call press conferences and put out press releases, but by the time the ink has dried on the press release it has lost interest and moved on to something else.

Innovate SA also operated the SME industry development program, a very important program that was valued by many organisations in South Australia. Let me tell you about that program. In the last round of funding, the government opened the funding, encouraged businesses to put in applications, worked with those businesses in refining their applications, assessed the applications, told the companies that they would be awarded the money, and made recommendations to the minister; however, between the announcement of the program and the time that the minister signed on the dotted line, the Treasurer pulled the money.

These companies went through a lot of expense to put their applications in. I think it is completely wrong for the government to pull funding mid-application process. They can do what they like outside of it, I presume, but when they are actually within a grant round, I think it is completely inappropriate. Many companies in South Australia relied on the excellent services that Innovate SA offered. This government has not put up any alternatives whatsoever to the businesses that hope to grow and use innovation as the basis of their growth. The minister made the hilarious comment recently—

The ACTING SPEAKER (Hon. M.J. Wright): Wind up, please.

Mr MARSHALL: —that the government's interest in innovation would not be diminished with the closure of Innovate SA. We look forward to finding out how that will play out.

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