Published on the 02/12/2015 | Written by Beverley Head
Just days out from the anticipated release of Australia’s innovation statement Wyatt Roy has given a big green tick to a Microsoft innovation report filled with its recommendations for the nation…
Roy, the assistant minister for innovation, has clearly earned himself the adjective peripatetic, scouring the globe for innovation ideas in Silicon Valley, Israel, Boston and New York both since and before his appointment to the Turnbull Government ministry.
He’s visited and enjoyed the hospitality of scores of international technology companies, met much of Australia’s technology diaspora, been a high profile attendee and speaker at technology conferences, and also run policy hackathons and coding camps for politicians.
He’s been everywhere man.
Welcoming the Microsoft report, released this week in the wake of his visit to Boston in July, Roy said that there had been a “real effort around culture, capital, talent, collaboration and government leading by example” in Boston that held important lessons for Australia.
The tour of Boston, which was coordinated by Microsoft, also involved shadow minister Ed Husic in another demonstration of collaboration and was no doubt conceived in part as a way to rehabilitate Microsoft’s reputation as a good corporate citizen after its bruising appearance at the Senate Committee Hearings into tax avoidance held in April this year.
In August the Senate Committee published its recommendations arising from that investigation, which suggested that Government departments think twice before procuring goods and services from technology companies which had been identified as tax avoiders; companies such as Google, Microsoft and Apple.
With this report and its recommendations to Government about how to foster more innovation, Microsoft is clearly attempting to build bridges.
Google meanwhile also wants to be seen to be doing its bit for Australia; working with the University of Adelaide it has developed a free online course to prepare teachers to offer coding in the curriculum content in the classroom, has developed a free computing careers guide, and offers grants to support high schools introducing more computer science content into the curriculum.
And then there’s Apple – which at least continues to sell its products here, even if it’s not too fond of paying tax.
