Back in December 2015, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull launched his $1.1 billion National Innovation and Science Agenda under much fanfare.
According to Turnbull, this agenda would “invest $1.1 billion to incentivise innovation and entrepreneurship, reward risk taking, and promote science, maths and computing in schools”, and was to include tax concessions and tax breaks for those that engage in start-ups.
On the surface, the plan sounded quite good. However, Turnbull’s actions since launching the agenda undermined his message.
First, there was the deep funding cuts and job losses inflicted by the Coalition Government on the CSIRO.
Then there is the Turnbull Government’s staunch support of Australia’s negative gearing and the capital gains tax (CGT) discount, thus endorsing the very thing that has held back innovation and entrepreneurship in Australia: too much investment into non-productive housing:
Seriously, who would want to bother with the hardship of taking a risk on a new business when you can instead buy a negatively geared investment property, watch it grow in value, and then sell it for tax effective capital gain?
And which bank is going to lend a start-up funds while there are oodles of “low risk” mortgages to profit from that require minimal capital to be held?
Before he sold-out to the property lobby, Malcolm Turnbull agreed that Australia’s housing tax settings were holding the economy back. In 2005, Turnbull decried Australia’s “very generous” negative gearing and capital gains tax (CGT) concessions which he described as a “sheltering tax haven” that is “skewing national investment away from wealth-creating pursuits, towards housing”.
Then in September, we received more evidence that Prime Minister Turnbull does not actually care about innovation with news that R&D tax concessions would be cut by 1.5 percentage points for the first $100 million of eligible spending after the Government struck a deal with Labor.
Now, the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has released a report questioning the economic benefits of the Turnbull Government’s National Innovation and Science Agenda. Amongst other things, the ANAO has raised concerns about the limited time-frame in which the innovation agenda was developed and the criteria used to measure the performance of the scheme. From The Australian:
The report by the Australian National Audit Office has said there is no way to know whether the National Innovation and Science Agenda has had any economic impact and noted several of the 32 proposals “that involved significant expenditure aimed at transforming parts of the innovation system relied on assertions rather than evidence”…
The audit office found Mr Turnbull’s department provided advice in such a short time frame that “a number of important matters were not addressed in the advice to government, including implementation risks, governance, and evaluation arrangements”.
“The ANAO observed that much of the advice was general in nature and did not present quantitative or in-depth analysis of problems, expected impacts or how outcomes would be measured”…
The report reveals senior public servants warned the government soon after the innovation agenda was announced about measuring the performance of the scheme…
The report also points to concerns about the short time frame in which it was developed by the departments…
the audit office said it had been advised by the Prime Minister’s department in June this year that the package was “too small” for modelling to register an economic impact.
“Industry acknowledged to the ANAO in April 2017 that there are significant challenges in evaluating the contribution of the NISA to the broader innovation landscape and the changes sought by government,’’ the auditor said.
“Industry has commented to the ANAO that many of the measures and effects are relatively small, and are unlikely to be captured at a whole-of-economy level.”
So, the National Innovation and Science Agenda was developed in hast and is pure spin over substance. Classic Do-Nothing Malcolm.
Like Tony Abbott before him, Malcolm Turnbull is concerned more about slogans and maintaining appearances over genuine policy action.
