Stephen Cenatiempo:
Time to talk more federal politics with the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury and the Member for Fenner, Dr Andrew Leigh. Andrew, good morning.
Andrew Leigh:
Good morning Stephen, great to be with you.
Cenatiempo:
I’m not going to talk to you about the Budget. Beyond the charity issue, though. I mean, in the current environment to be cutting funding to things like Invictus and this $3,000 to Cameron Baird’s family. I mean, these are minor amounts of money and when people are doing it tough, I mean surely this is where we need to focus?
Leigh:
Well, we’re giving record amounts of funding to veterans’ groups and through veterans support. A lot of what we’ve done since coming to office is to get veterans’ claims processed more quickly. Invictus has done terrific work, and we continue to support a whole range of veterans support groups across the country.
Cenatiempo:
But this has come off the back of Invictus putting in a bid to host the Games here in Australia again, and now they have no funding whatsoever. How does that make sense?
Leigh:
Well again, we continue to support a whole range of…
Cenatiempo:
Andrew, Andrew, I’m sorry. Look, I let you get away with this all the time. I’m not going to let you put the spin and I know you’ve got the talking points that have been handed to all of you. This is purely about – I’m talking about Invictus. Now you can go on about everything you’ve done for veterans. We know that veterans have been treated worse under this government than by any previous government. That’s what veterans say. Why pull funding from Invictus?
Leigh:
Well, that’s simply not right Stephen that veteran treatment has been worse. If you look at the wait time for processing veterans’ claims, that has substantially reduced under this government. Outsourcing under…
Cenatiempo:
What has that got to do with Invictus?
Leigh:
You just went to the treatment of veterans and I’m talking to you about one of the key issues for veterans, which is how quickly their claims are processed.
Cenatiempo:
Okay.
Leigh:
We fund a range of different veterans organisations across the country. I have the privilege of dealing with many of those. In some cases, these are competitive tender processes. I’m not sure whether that is one of the issues that’s come up in this case. Very happy to follow up on the particular one, but I do know that we support a lot of veterans groups because we value the service of veterans and this government has ensured that veterans are better treated than they were under the previous government, where they waited a lot longer to have their claims processed.
Cenatiempo:
Well that’s not what veterans are telling me. Alright, I want to talk about this speech you’re making. Is it today or tomorrow at the MCG?
Leigh:
This morning.
Cenatiempo:
This morning. It’s the Agile Australia Conference. Give us a background on the conference?
Leigh:
Well, it’s a conference of tech leaders talking about how to boost innovation in the country. And so I’ll be talking a bit about some of the initiatives in the Budget and also some of the ways in which we think about innovation. Innovation is not just a lone genius in the garage, it’s also people tinkering in teams and the trade in ideas. It’s important that we have a set of policies that support the next raft of innovators, recognising that most people who have a crack at making it big don’t succeed, but those who do bring huge benefits to themselves and the country.
Cenatiempo:
Tell me about the term, and this is, I didn’t understand the term so I want you to explain it. ‘Diffusion as discovery’, what does that mean?
Leigh:
Well the idea is that we get huge benefits when the first breakthrough is made but even more when those ideas are diffused right across the workforce. So you think about the impact of electrification. It was great when Faraday made the discovery, but it really came into its own when factories were remodelled and suddenly people could get the benefits of electrification in their homes.
Cenatiempo:
Yeah.
Leigh:
Now likewise, artificial intelligence – it’s great for a couple of frontier firms to have it; better yet if it can diffuse across the economy. And right now, only 7 per cent of small and medium enterprises say that they’re making heavy use of AI. So I think there’s a lot more potential for firms to learn from one another. The Budget’s instant asset write‑off, making that permanent which has been called for for a while, will allow firms to better invest in software and some of those new technologies as well. But it’s also an innovation mindset and being willing to embrace those new technologies as they come along.
Cenatiempo:
The instant asset write‑off. Look, I think it’s a no‑brainer that it’s permanent. I just wonder how many small businesses have got $20,000 to spend at the moment, which is the flip side of this and the Coalition’s policy of increasing it to $50,000. If you haven’t got $20,000, you’re not going to have $50,000. So I don’t know how effective that’s going to be at the moment. But you touch on the AI thing. I wonder that 7 per cent of businesses that are making use of it, and I don’t use it a lot in my line of work but is it good enough yet that it can be more widely used?
Leigh:
It’s being very heavily used by a range of different firms. So you look at firms which are stopping transcription, for example, and having that done by artificial intelligence. Harrison.ai is a terrific Australian firm that’s using it for analysing radiology scans. I think anyone who’s writing should use it as an editor. It’s a diligent and patient editor, even if it’s not a very good writer of your first draft. So, for a whole range of organisations it can be pretty handy. If English isn’t your first language, then having an AI checker substitutes for what you might have had to pay a proofreader for a decade ago.
Cenatiempo:
Is it cost‑effective? Because, I mean, I don’t trust it to do that for me yet. But is it a cost‑effective way of doing these kind of things?
Leigh:
Well it’s essentially free. These models are available online and I think people should play with them, really. There’s no good AI courses around that I’ve found. The best way is to tinker, try things and see what you find. You’ll notice what the innovators call the jagged frontier. It’s astonishingly good at some things and not very good at others. Now, it can solve maths problems, fold proteins but yet sometimes it struggles to count the number of words in a sentence.
So there’s weird things that it can and can’t do. But it’s getting better all the time, and I think firms that make use of it will end up hiring more workers. There’s a fascinating French study that finds that the firms that are best adopting AI are the ones that are growing the most and they’re adding the most workers. So maybe the biggest risk to your job isn’t from AI being adopted, but it’s a firm not adopting AI and falling behind, not being profitable, not being able to hire.
Cenatiempo:
It is that fear though, isn’t it? Maybe irrational, maybe not, that AI will become too good at some stage and, you know, those sci‑fi nerds out there will have different fears than the rest of us, I guess, but it’s certainly a frontier that we need to keep an eye on. So who will be at this Agile Australia Conference?
Leigh:
So, this is for a range of technology leaders coming from across Australia. It’s an annual conference that they hold and it’ll be a good conversation just about the things that we’re doing from the government’s standpoint, which is what I want to talk about. But then a lot of the discussion is about how firms can adapt in the new environment. As you say, these firms themselves are often being hit pretty hard. The drop in employment for new software coders has people a bit worried in some of the big Silicon Valley firms. But I’m told that a lot of the small Australian startups are hungry for coders. So, it’s an interesting environment for those people working in the software industry.
Cenatiempo:
It’s certainly a fascinating field. Andrew, good to talk to you. We’ll catch up again in a couple of weeks.
Leigh:
Likewise, thanks Stephen.
Cenatiempo:
Dr Andrew Leigh, the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury and the Member for Fenner.