News

Code for Victoria’s female focus

Victorian authorities will fund a project that specifically targets female coders and designers, putting them to work on service delivery and efficiency programs inside government. The Code for Victoria...

Build community with digital data

Being the leader of a community and making decisions to address social and economic challenges may feel like a gambler rolling the dice. You know you have to place...

Our tech treaty with the Kiwis

More than two weeks after the Australian and New Zealand governments unveiled a bilateral Science, Research and Innovation Cooperation Agreement, details of initiatives under the treaty have now emerged....

NBN thin-skinned social censors

NBN Co has ramped up efforts to censor critics and has labelled individuals and not-for-profits that provide feedback or are critical of the National Broadband Network (NBN) as trolls,...

Good news and bad for R&D tax

If you are a company that has claimed taxpayer support for software development via the R&D Tax Incentive in the past several years, there is both good news and...

Robots and tax: paying the freight

Australia does not need a robot tax – but it should take automation and the erosion of traditional jobs a whole lot more seriously. CSIRO’s Data61 chief executive Adrian...

PM faces cyber skills challenge

Wary of looming shortages of digital security specialists, the federal government hopes to unearth the next generation of cyber warriors with its upcoming Cyber Security Challenge. While the challenge...

City Deals, the same but different

For a couple of years now, the Australian Government has had a Smart Cities plan. It has website devoted to the subject, and has appointed up-and-comer Angus Taylor as...

Grid-scale battery trials for Vic

The construction of Australia’s first grid-scale battery storage facility in Victoria should provide big opportunities for the state’s innovation and research sectors. The Victorian Government is currently accepting tenders...

Padang & Co – an Aussie abroad

In 1983, while he was a young banker working in Sydney’s growing financial markets, Adam Lyle joined the NSW Entrepreneurs Workshop. His first project was a stair-wheelchair. While financially...

Data, cities and new civic pride

In Victorian England, poverty grew from the shadows of wealth. Slums slumped against symbols of civic pride, cowering next to towering town halls funded through rich merchant princes, whose...

Fairfax papers in Alibaba’s sights

Newspaper and internet group Fairfax last week confirmed the media sector’s worst kept secret as it unveiled a damp squib of a half year result: that it is considering...

Stunning growth of Aussie VC

When Springboard Enterprises founder Kay Koplovitz was asked to bring her development program for female entrepreneurs to Australia nine years ago she thought it was pointless. “I said there’s...

ATO R&D advice is a bombshell

The Australian Taxation Office’s just-published alert aimed at companies seeking R&D tax benefits for software development activity has landed among high-growth startups like a bombshell. The advice is confusing...