(Amendment to Urgent Motion, 21 October 2014, Legislative Assembly, NSW Parliament)

I support the CommSec report. In a previous life I recruited hundreds of people at CommSec who continue to contribute to our important economy. My one concern about this motion is that it does not look to the future. We need to ensure that we embrace new industries in the future.

Start-ups and digital entrepreneurship are key to the future, especially in my electorate, whether it is through education and ensuring that coding is taught in schools—my recent questions to the education Minister confirm that more needs to be done there—or immigration and the way we attract entrepreneurs to Australia. That is important. Indeed, federally there is work being done on tax reform to ensure that employee share option plans are able to make it easier for start-ups to recruit. Procurement and government grants also need to favour the start-up and entrepreneur sector.

I acknowledge the work of the former Deputy Premier with the innovation and start-up sector. He was a big supporter of the sector, and the sector greatly respected that. I am concerned that when we are looking at tax breaks and government funding much of our attention focuses on industries of the past, such as racing and mining, and not enough on the future. Indeed, we have had a discussion about clubs being able to provide child care and support for that. I would like to see start-ups able to provide child care and support. That is happening throughout the United States where digital co-working spaces are given incentives to have child care on site. That should happen here. As it is important for us to look to the future, I move:

That the motion be amended by the addition of the following paragraph:

(4) Notes the importance of start-ups and digital entrepreneurship to the future growth of the New South Wales economy.

See Hansard record HERE.