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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-05-11 Daily Xml
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MTX Group

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay) (14:58): Supplementary, Mr Speaker: did the government offer any incentives to the MTX Group to come to Adelaide?

The SPEAKER: The Premier.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! the Premier has the call.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:58): I want to advise the parliament on our approach to bringing companies to South Australia. It is a whole-of-cabinet approach. Our desire since coming to government has been to make this a more attractive place to invest and to start businesses, and I want to commend the Minister for Trade and Investment for his role. He works very closely, of course, with the Minister for Innovation and Skills.

One of the things that really attracted MTX, like many tech companies, is the focus that we have on developing strategies to develop our workforce, and this is extraordinarily important to many of these larger companies. There is a massive skills shortage in the tech sector right around the world. Take for example cyber. We know that there is a major, major skills shortage right around the world. We know there is a massive threat. We also know that there is a massive requirement for skills, yet the whole of the world is scrambling for those skills. What we have in South Australia is a joined-up approach across cabinet to attracting those companies to South Australia.

We unashamedly work with companies like MTX, like Accenture, like Google, like PricewaterhouseCoopers, if they like, and we present to them opportunities to develop a skilled workforce in South Australia. Whilst no specific deal has been struck with MTX, we are very keen to talk to them about the possibility of taking apprentices and trainees studying for a digital qualification into their organisation.

This is very important to develop that skilled workforce for the future. If you are not doing that type of work, then ultimately what tech companies are doing is taking people from one company to join the next company. That is not adding any additionality. So what we have decided is to put money, via our Skilling Australians approach, into apprenticeships and traineeships. There are a large number of them in the technical and trade area, but there is also a large number of them now going into these digital areas.

In fact, I think to date we have signed up more than 37,000 apprentices and trainees since coming to government, and what we are going to see is more of those. I am hopeful that companies like MTX will take advantage of that opportunity. The reason why we want them to take advantage of that is because that will be keeping young people here in our state. What we have seen since we came to government is a complete reversal of the trend for this exodus of capital and young people out of our state; in fact, it's quite the opposite now.

We've got capital flowing into South Australia and we've got young people not looking elsewhere—not looking elsewhere. We saw this trend start before the coronavirus hit, and what we have seen is that it has accelerated since, and the reason why it has accelerated is because we are now offering opportunities to the next generation. If they want to work for one of the world's largest global consulting firms like PwC or Accenture, they are growing their operations here in South Australia. If they want to work in the creative sector, they want to be making movies in South Australia, they are getting those opportunities in South Australia.

With our gaming rebate, we are now making this the most attractive place in the country, working with the federal government with their 30 per cent rebate, to bring game developers here to South Australia. What we have recently seen is a very successful IPO from Mighty Kingdom in South Australia. There is no doubt that part of the success of that company's IPO was due to the environment which we have created. We are very happy to continue to support companies coming to South Australia by creating an environment which recognises that they need lower costs of operation and they need skill availability. That's our focus in government.

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