![]() We've also, in this budget outlined plans for a patent box system in Australia. ![]() And so Lot 14 has a number of small businesses that are in the start up phase, the incubation phase, that are going to be able to leverage off of that. And I'm going to look to those businesses for the future, to look at a couple of the other things in our economic plan announced in the budget, the digital economy strategy has a particular stream around artificial intelligence, which is going to be a huge jobs and growth area in the future, as many parts of business activity rely increasingly on artificial intelligence to drive their systems. The type of innovative businesses there is very exciting. Simon Birmingham: Oh, look, I think it will provide many thousands over time in terms of what occurs as businesses grow and move off of that site. Leon Byner : How many jobs do you think Lot 14 is going to provide our state? Do you know, have you got a figure in mind? And I'm literally just on my way now to Lot 14, to visit the Australian Space Agency, where, again, our government is extending some of the investment there because of the success that our skilling has had. So it's hard to quite pinpoint entirely there, Leon, but I'm very encouraged by the fact that as we've rolled out some of these subsidies for apprenticeships and for skilling, Steven Marshall and David Pisoni have been usually the first of the state governments to sign onto those plans and to get those positions rolling. Simon Birmingham: It's been a long term historic problem for South Australia in terms of the unemployment rate often sticking just a little bit higher than the rest of the nation, it tends to be that then when the rest of the nation goes into particular debt, that sometimes SA's a little bit better in those worse times. As Federal Finance Minister, why do you think we've been challenged by this? Why has that happened? We've got a less than favourable unemployment rate compared to the rest of Australia. Leon Byner : This connects over my next question. So all of those are about trying to help address workforce needs by better equipping Australians with the skills so that we can take the record number of people in jobs today and grow it by the forecast of 250,000 further jobs over the next two years. So that's 270,000 additional subsidies for employers to take on new apprenticeships and to to get more schools across our economy, not just in in those sorts of traditional apprenticeships, but also got additional support for skilling in the care sectors where there is huge demand to meet the needs in aged care, but also important parts of the economy, like digital economy where strategy there include the skills component. In fact, that's on top of some 170,000 that had been pushed through by government. And that's why this year's budget contains particularly additional funding in relation to skills, creating more than 100,000 additional new apprenticeship subsidies. Simon Birmingham: So we do have challenges in some parts of the economy, there's no doubt about that. A lot of people looking for workers can't find them. Leon Byner : As Finance Minister, I'd like your take on the fact that, and you would have heard this. But the economic experts and the Reserve Bank and the Treasury all indicate we need to keep pushing unemployment even lower and to be able to drive wages growth, to be able to drive strength across our economy, that can provide them the economic strength and the revenue and financial services in the future. And we're the first country across the developed world to have been able to achieve that outcome. We've got Australia back to a position of having more jobs than we had prior to the commencement of the Covid-19 pandemic. That's what the economic plan that our government outlined in the budget this week said to do. Simon Birmingham: Well, what we need to do is keep growing jobs in our economy overall. Leon Byner : Tell me, how austere do we need to be as opposed to spend money on resources that are sadly lacking? Leon Byner : Finance Minister Simon Birmingham.
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