An Albanese Labor Government will establish a Startup Year to tap into the energy and ideas of young Australians to accelerate the creation of new businesses and future jobs.

The program will allow final year university students, or recent graduates, to learn from experts about how to transform their cutting edge ideas and research into products and services that Australia can sell to the world.

“This policy harnesses the ideas and energy of young Australians and focuses on the huge potential our younger generations have to lead us into the future,” said Ed Husic, Shadow Minister for Industry and Innovation. 

The students would do their training at established ‘accelerators’ or ‘incubators’, which are organisations that specialise in helping new businesses get off the ground. A lot of these organisations are linked to universities. 

“We need to inspire and empower an ever-greater diversity of communities and individuals to build great Australian companies that become world-leading in emerging global markets, Mr Husic said. 

“This program will bring together the most innovative young entrepreneurs, universities and other industry leaders to work in concert to increase the success of Australia’s startup sector,” he said. 

This is about training a generation of young entrepreneurs to be confident to expand new industries and learn how to attract private investment. These industries have the potential to be some of the big employers of the future. 

Australian startups in areas like manufacturing, medicine, IT, and clean energy have the potential to build the industries of tomorrow while helping solve some of our toughest domestic and global challenges.

Australia has one of the lowest startup rates in the world. After eight long years of failing to invest in innovation under the Morrison Government, Australia is already lagging the rest of the world when it comes to accelerating future industries.

Under the Liberals, Australia has fallen to number 23 on the Global Innovation Index. We must be more ambitious if we want to bring more great Australian ideas to the global market, and create new jobs. 

Data from the Australian Department of Industry shows that new businesses create more jobs than established ones. Over a six year period, businesses younger than three years old created 1.44 million jobs, while established business lost 400,000 jobs.

You can sum up Scott Morrison’s approach to innovation and tech: always late, always little and always over-hyped.

Startup Year will train up to 2,000 students per year.

The Startup Year will be supported by HELP/HECS loans, up to a maximum of $11,300.

The loans can go towards paying for things such as training, equipment, or building prototypes.