New research from Tech Council Australia (TCA) has found that scaling tech investment to 4.6 per cent as a share of GDP could deliver an additional $38 billion in productivity gains in 2035. A bump to 6.9 per cent could generate an astonishing $167 billion in productivity gains.
But who decides where that money is spent?
Earlier this year, Tandadzo ‘Tando’ Matanda, one half of Musa Ventures, a venture assessment platform designed to help close the $5 trillion global SME funding gap between women and minority-owned ventures, won the Innovator award.
“A quarter of Australian SMEs have inadequate access to finance. They don’t have enough money coming in, be it from banks, credit lending or any other source to help them actually grow their businesses. And it just hinders their ability to create healthy scalable businesses,” Matanda told B&T earlier this year.
“And it goes all the way up to 60 per cent in developed markets. And female and minority founders in both developing and developed markets are disproportionately affected by that funding gap. This has huge implications particularly when you consider that SMEs contribute 40 per cent to the GDP of most countries, and they employ about 90 per cent of people.”
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TCA CEO Damian Kassabgi said setting a target for tech investment by 2035, which could be shared by government and industry, would spur action to address Australia’s lagging productivity growth.
“Australians enjoy some of the highest living standards in the world. To ensure we can keep growing, we need to see an uplift in productivity growth,” he said.
“Australia’s productivity growth has been declining for some time, which is one of our most pressing economic challenges. Achieving the level of growth we need to turn this around and see our economy thrive requires greater tech development and adoption.”
“Tech investment enables companies to commercialise their research and create new business models, making our economy more productive and resilient. There are also practical benefits to increased tech adoption, which can accelerate the growth of both small and large businesses.”
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Australia’s tech investment – defined as the sum of research and development (R&D) and tech adoption spending – is currently equivalent to 3.9% of GDP. Without action, this figure is forecast to fall to 3.5% by 2030 due to the ongoing decline in R&D spending and a lack of growth in tech adoption. Modelling suggests this drop would cost Australia about $8.2 billion in 2035 alone, and a total of $25.3 billion over the next decade in lost productivity.
In August, at the Women Leading Tech Alumni Breakfast in Sydney, a panel of tech leaders, including Matanda, said that Australia’s societal problems could limit our ability to grow and develop effectively.
“It’s only as good as the data that gets put in,” said panellist Kate Monckton, cyber partner at Deloitte and Cyber Security category winner at this year’s Women Leading Tech Awards.
“If you put crap stuff in there, you get crap stuff out… Our society is misogynistic, racist, is not representative of diverse perspectives. What you get out can be highly biased. This isn’t news, it’s been happening for a while.
“Australia as a society, we fall behind in some areas, especially with gender norms. Here’s a bit of background as to why this is so important. One in three Australian men think that women make up claims of rape when in fact five per cent of rape claims are found to be fabricated. One in four Australians this year think that children are disadvantaged when the mother is working,” added Monckton.
“One in five Australians — regardless of gender — believe that it is better when a man is in charge, in general, in the home or in business.”
