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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2017-04-11 Daily Xml
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Early Commercialisation Fund

The Hon. J.M. GAZZOLA (15:17): My question is to the Minister for Manufacturing and Innovation. Can the minister update the chamber on recent recipients of grant funding through the South Australian Early Commercialisation Fund?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Employment, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation, Minister for Manufacturing and Innovation, Minister for Automotive Transformation, Minister for Science and Information Economy) (15:17): I thank the honourable member for his question and his interest in things innovative. I have seen the honourable member a number of times at St Paul's Creative Centre, which is a fantastic co-working space in Adelaide particularly focused towards our creative industries. It also hosts many great innovations in, particularly, the live music scene, of which the honourable member is a great supporter and participant.

The government aims to make sure that entrepreneurs have access to the resources, conditions and capital they need in order to bring great ideas to life and to get them to market. We have a range of programs that we run, including the Innovation Voucher Program that I mentioned to this chamber earlier today. We are offering our assistance in many different ways, particularly through initiatives that are tailor-made to give support to help start-ups and early-stage companies, not just those that are already well developed that are looking to innovate and do things differently.

The government has made a significant commitment to supporting innovation, as I outlined to the honourable Leader of the Opposition's first question today, in the 2016 state budget, with an allocation of around $80 million to support programs to do that. Commitments like the one the Leader of the Opposition asked about, the $50 million venture capital fund we will make available to eligible South Australian-based entrepreneurs and companies looking to commercialise projects with a strong potential to succeed nationally and globally.

Also, we have our $4.7 million investment to make Adelaide the first Gig City in Australia, offering affordable high-speed internet, up to 100 times faster than the national average, of speeds one gigabit symmetrical speed and up to 10 gig symmetrical speed in innovation precincts across metropolitan Adelaide. I note that one of those innovation precincts that will be the first to be connected is the St Paul's Creative Centre in the city that, a number of months ago, the Lord Mayor and I helped lay the cable for to be connected up to the Gig City network, the SABRENet network that runs quite close to that centre.

Regarding the subject of the honourable member's question, the state government's South Australian Early Commercialisation Fund, it is a new competitive funding program designed to assist entrepreneurs and businesses to accelerate the commercialisation of ideas and services from proof of concept through to product development and early commercialisation. I was informed at an event at TechInSA just last week that the fund has already attracted over 180 applications of support.

In March, close to $1 million was awarded to a range of entrepreneurs to help them bring their ideas to market through the Early Commercialisation Fund. The projects coming through the fund hail from industries like gaming, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, as well as agribusiness, food and wine, medtech and biotechnology, to name just a few. We know that some of those in particular are key growth industries in South Australia.

The companies that are receiving assistance through the Early Commercialisation Fund are on track to become world-class success stories, and some of them are almost there. Take Inovor Technologies, which use local electronics and precision machining partners to produce small satellites for international markets. They have invented a new satellite design that offers superior fault tolerance compared to existing designs on the market. The Early Commercialisation Fund provides support to assist this to happen.

Myriota has received funding to help develop a low-cost transceiver with Internet of Things capabilities for businesses in remote areas or who transport goods over long distances. Their technology will enable things that the Leader of the Opposition will be very interested in, such as low-cost livestock water tank level monitoring for very remote cattle stations, using low earth orbit satellites. A trial of this project is now underway, and there are almost endless possibilities for this interconnected technology using low orbit satellites, particularly in remote areas, of which Australia has a lot.

The Hon. I.K. Hunter interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. K.J. MAHER: I will ignore interjections from all sides of the chamber, Mr President. ODD Games has received $150,000 to help them develop a framework that allows game companies to develop games across multiple platforms simultaneously for consoles, PCs, Macs and mobiles. This will enable developers to get their products to market much faster and free up their time for innovative game development and design. I congratulate Ben Marsh and his team at ODD Games, who I have gone out to visit at their dream factory where they have designed games. I think Monster Truck Destruction spent some time as the No. 1 game genre anywhere in the world. They are a real success story from South Australia.

Presagen, whose artificial intelligence system enables software to think and reason intelligently, much like people do, allowing it to automate a range of human-centric tasks, including processing of data and forms through to negotiating and communicating with customers. The AI and automation industry has been forecast to reach over $1 trillion by 2024, so we are very pleased that we can help this South Australian company to capitalise on what is a growing industry and will be a an increasingly big global industry.

Another company, Ailytic, received $218,000 to support the development of its artificial intelligence-enabled scheduling software. The WeChat social media platform has been developed by the Jiyu Group to allow companies to bypass traditional export channels and sell directly to Chinese consumers. The grant from the Early Commercialisation Fund will help accelerate the commercialisation of this innovative product.

Bzpay Holdings is another company that received $50,000 for a pilot project in a major bank of transaction settlement platform that will reduce risks to lenders and customers and lower transaction costs. Jackson Care Technologies received $50,000 to advance its mobility analytics software for carers to allow the mobility for carers to be greatly increased. Finally, Optima Mining Systems is developing rock chip extraction systems and also received $50,000 from the Early Commercialisation Fund.

These innovative South Australian companies are going to contribute much to our economy, and I am sure we will see a number of these companies make it big on the global stage. It is great that the state government can provide—

The Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins: Seven minutes.

The Hon. K.J. MAHER: Mr President, I get a seven-minute warning, when others only get a nine or ten-minute warning. I am deeply offended.

The PRESIDENT: Just finish your answer, minister.

The Hon. K.J. MAHER: We know that each of these groundbreaking innovations that come out of South Australia build on the sustainable and creative industries we already have and are key to a prosperous future for this state.

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