Published on the 04/07/2016 | Written by Beverley Head
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s $1.1 billion innovation agenda looks increasingly uncertain following a federal election which failed to deliver a resounding mandate…
Saturday’s federal election has yet to deliver a firm result with pundits predicting either the slimmest majority to the Coalition or a hung Parliament with Turnbull forced to deal with the Independents to get anything across the line. At the same time he may lose a key ally in the assistant minister for innovation, Wyatt Roy, who at time of writing is behind in his Queensland seat, though yet-to-be-counted postal votes could save him.
While Labor performed well and clawed back a number of seats, it seems highly unlikely that opposition leader Bill Shorten would attempt to forge an alliance with the Greens and Independents to form Government.
It’s not just the House of Representatives in disarray; the double dissolution election was intended to clear the Senate of a raft of minority parties, instead it appears likely that the Senate will again have no clear major-party majority with a handful of independents calling the shots.
That could lead to struggles to get the May Budget measures passed which contained the funding for the $1.1 billion National Innovation and Science Agenda, and for the $230 million Cyber Security Strategy. The Senate structure might also delay the introduction of the proposed mandatory data breach notification legislation.
Whatever the Senate deliberations, without a resounding mandate, even if Turnbull can form Government in his own right, he will not have the clout he had expected to drive his innovation agenda forward. And he will also have to survive calls for a leadership spill after the poor election performance – yet another challenge to the nation’s innovation agenda which is very much a Turnbull baby.
Peak ICT industry body the Australian Information Industry Association has however stated that whatever the final election outcome the innovation momentum already at work in the private sector cannot be stalled. AIIA CEO Rob Fitzpatrick told iStart that while the Government had policy frameworks that could accelerate progress, innovation would not be stalled by politics.
He was though scathing of the election process that still has Australians voting on paper with pencils attached to strings. “How come we are still living in an analogue world?” said Fitzpatrick. “The Government needs to be seen as a real exemplar of a digital nation,” he said.
A spokesman for the Australian Computer Society said that the organisation was unlikely to make any comment until after more votes had been counted, and the likely outcome of the election was clarified.
Image: (ABC News: Nick Haggarty)
