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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-05-13 Daily Xml
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MTX Group

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay) (14:59): My question is to the Minister for Trade and Investment. Now that the minister has had 48 hours to check, can he now confirm if MTX Group were provided any incentives to establish an Adelaide hub?

The SPEAKER: The Premier.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:59): The member might not recall—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Members on my left!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —but it was actually a question which I answered two days ago. It shows how much they are listening to this question. I provided a comprehensive answer to the house, which I am happy now to repeat.

We are absolutely delighted to have MTX here in South Australia, as we are to have global companies like Amazon Web Services here in South Australia, global companies like Google here, PwC here, Accenture here. They are all attracted to the work that we are doing in South Australia to make this a more attractive place for people to invest. As I said the other day, and I'm very happy to repeat again, part of that attraction is the work that we are putting into skills development and making sure we have the skills of the future here in South Australia.

Today, I had a meeting with Dr Andrew Johnson, who is head of the Bureau of Meteorology, and we were talking to him about the skills that they require in the Bureau of Meteorology going forward in South Australia. It's fair to say, a lot of those skills are in these critical areas, like digital skills, which we are putting a huge amount of effort into in South Australia. MTX are attracted by the excellent work we are doing in terms of workforce development and so are these global tech companies. The good news is we haven't heard the end of the line-up, if you like, coming to South Australia.

More and more companies are attracted by the way that we have gone about developing a skills plan to make this a very attractive place to invest. One of the other things that attracts companies like MTX to South Australia is the great capability that is being clustered on Lot Fourteen and more broadly across South Australia in places like Tonsley, Mawson Lakes, out at Edinburgh and down at Osborne.

On Lot Fourteen itself, we have the Australian Cyber Collaboration Centre, the Australian Institute for Machine Learning, the Smart Satellite Cooperative Research Centre, the Australian Space Agency, MIT—the number one ranked university in the world—and, of course, Stone and Chalk, which is a great startup/scale-up incubator. So the answer to the question, which the member has now asked twice is: yes, we are providing an investment in skills. No detail has been—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: Well, they say, 'How much?' 'It's secret'.

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Lee!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: We are offering it to every single company in South Australia. It's such a secret—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Playford!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —it's on every single government website. We have been promoting this since the day we got to government. We were the first government in Australia—

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Lee!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —to sign up to the Skilling Australia program with the federal government. It's a $200 million secret developing the skills for the future. It's open to South Australian companies, it's open to interstate companies wanting to come to South Australia, it's open to international companies wanting to come to South Australia, it's open to companies that want to start up here in South Australia, grow their business in South Australia to keep more South Australians employed. What we are doing is developing the workforce of the future.

When we came to government we had an exodus of young people out of this state. They didn't have a skills policy, and they didn't have an employment policy which was keeping young people here for these very attractive jobs. By contrast, three years later we now have net migration to our state. They hate it, but it's a fact. Young people see a future here in South Australia working for companies like MTX and Amazon, Google and PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Accenture, at MIT, in our space agency—the future for South Australia—because the work that's being done by this government is very, very positive for companies right around the world and we welcome them all here to our state.

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