James Riley

Freshly minted chief scientist Tony Haymet won’t rule out nuclear energy as a power source to drive Australia’s participation in the global artificial intelligence boom but says right now the national focus should be on scaling renewables infrastructure for wind and solar. Professor Haymet said the fast-evolving worldwide market for AI products and services was an opportunity for Australia as a host for AI data centres powered by renewable energy. Appointed as chief scientist on Tuesday, he said Australia was an attractive location for power-hungry AI data centres, and said the data centre sector should be viewed as an export opportunity if the nation can scale cheap, abundant wind and solar power.

The National Reconstruction Fund Corporation has made its first funding foray into its medical science priority area with a $32 million equity investment in Harrison.ai, an artificial intelligence MedTech pioneer. The NRF investment is a part of a $100 million-plus series C funding round, and will be used by Harrison.ai to develop additional products for its range of AI-based radiology and pathology diagnostics. NRF Corporation chair Martijn Wilder said the investment would also help ensure that the Sydney-based Harrison.ai continued retained its operational base in Australia, growing a pipeline of jobs for local engineers, clinical AI experts and researchers.

The National Reconstruction Fund Corporation has announced a $22.5 million investment in secure data infrastructure provider Vault Cloud, bringing its total investments into Australian companies in the past month to $100 million. The investment in Vault, announced by NRFC chair Martijn Wilder on Friday, is the first into the fund’s Defence Capability priority area, and will be used to develop and deploy new services including an AUKUS cloud capability, among other things. The NRFC’s investment is part of Vault’s Series B funding round, with additional capital to come from private Australian investors.

The Industry department has quietly published a response to a parliamentary inquiry into advanced manufacturing, dismissing a recommendation that government appoint a national commissioner to oversee policy and program coordination in the sector. The government response comes a full year after the Sovereign, smart, sustainable: Driving advanced manufacturing in Australia report was tabled in Parliament, with many of its recommendations ‘noted’ as already covered by subsequent policy programs. The response was published to the Industry department’s website in the final sitting week, while the report itself had been tabled in November 2023.

There is surely no more challenging federal issue in need of urgent reform than tech procurement policy. It is the giant industry development policy lever sitting in plain sight, but which politics and cultural inertia have left virtually untouched for 20 years. It is the strangest dynamic, and one that stems from the treasonously bad Free Trade Agreement signed with the United Stated in 2004 and which came into the affect the following year. The FTA set in stone an existing cultural bias within the bureaucracy against buying local technology or using procurement budgets to building ICT capability. It deeply entrenched the idea in government that Australia is not a developer of technology, but rather derives economic benefit by being a sophisticated user of technology. This was a Howard era mantra that remains a cultural touchstone inside the Department of Finance.

The National Reconstruction Fund Corporation’s first ever investment is out the door, marking an important milestone for industrial policy in Australia, and a landmark event in the life of the Albanese government. The $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund is a signature policy, announced well in advance of the 2022 election as the largest ever peacetime investment in Australian industry. The fund is the foundational element of this government’s re-industrialisation agenda, which now includes the $22 billion Future Made in Australia program of work. This first NRF investment in Toowoomba-based Russell Mineral Equipment will be welcomed by Australian industry. It will be, as Industry minister Ed Husic said in a statement, “the first in a long line in a long line of investments” aimed at rebuilding sovereign manufacturing capability.

Australian government tech procurement practices have fallen out of step with global best practice, leaving local tech companies without the same support enjoyed by international peers. While Australia’s major trading partners have been more explicit and aggressive in using procurement to directly support their own technology industries, Australia has not. A new report from Insight Economics – with the inspiring title Improving evaluation of economic impact of ICT procurement – has found Australia has been left behind by the more active governments that use their significant purchasing power to support local capability and supply chains.

Once the embattled software entrepreneur Richard White had resigned from WiseTech Global – the company he founded 30 years ago – it was only a matter of time before his resignation landed at the Technology Council of Australia as well. It didn’t take long. After a day of high drama, Mr White resigned as a director and chief executive officer at WiseTech late in the afternoon, and by early evening he had also advised the directors of the Tech Council that he would resign from the TCA board. “The board have accepted Richard’s resignation effective immediately,” a spokesperson for the industry group said.The resignations follow weeks of scandalous headlines related to a court case involving an ex-lover and revelations of dubious alleged mentoring arrangements.

Gilmour Space Technologies has successfully puts its Eris launch vehicle through a critical wet-test rehearsal, taking the orbital rocket to within ten seconds of launch. As the company continues to wait on Australian Space Agency approval for a permit to launch the three-stage, Australian designed and manufactured rocket from its Bowen Orbital Spaceport in Queensland, the completed wet-test is a major and final milestone ahead of the Eris’ maiden flight. The launch permit, which has been in process with the space agency for more than two years, is the final regulatory hurdle that Gilmour Space must clear before it can hit the ignition switch on the first ever Australian made rocket toward space. During the test, which involved more than 40 Gilmour Space technicians, the Eris test rocket was safely loaded with propellants with all launch procedures executed up to T-10 seconds before lift-off.

Of all the policy presentations at The Industry Papers forum last week, the one that touched a raw nerve was about the Australian Public Service, with a call to bring the regulations governing senior bureaucrats more in line with the private sector. The senior leadership of our public service are held to lower standards of accountability than leaders in the private sector, and it is costing Australian taxpayers billions of dollars each year. In a piece headlined ‘The high price of bureaucratic power,’ ANU mathematician Dr Priya Dev argues that Commonwealth entities and the senior bureaucracy are essentially self-regulated, without the rigour of a mechanism equivalent to the Corporations Act.