The Yarn with Senator Andrew Bragg

Tech Under Fire: Kate Pounder Tackles AI Challenges and Techno Nationalism in Australia on The Yarn

Senator Andrew Bragg Season 2 Episode 3

On this episode of The Yarn, join Kate Pounder, the dynamic former CEO of the Tech Council of Australia, as she delves into the pressing issues at the forefront of Australia's technology landscape. Broadcasting from the iconic Parliament House in Canberra, Kate offers an insider’s view on the challenges and triumphs in the tech sector.

Speaker 1:

Kate Pounder, from the Tech Council CEO. Welcome to the yarn Pleasure to be here. So here we are at Parliament House Canberra, a not always technically magnificent building, but a beautiful building in some ways. Some people like it, others don't like it. What's happening today at the Tech Council?

Speaker 2:

Well, we're gearing up today, so next week is a really big week for us because it's our annual press gallery and parliamentary tricks. So we get a lot of our members coming down to Canberra. We get a lot of MPs and press, gallery journalists and decision makers all kind of coming together at the end of the year, both to reflect on what we've achieved during the course of the year but also just to celebrate the fact we're getting towards the end of the sitting period.

Speaker 2:

So we're really looking forward to that, because it's, I think, the more that the industry meets with politicians and decision makers and the more that we better understand each other and we get better outcomes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so you're the Tech Council of Australia. Technology is ubiquitous, it's everywhere. How do you distinguish what is technology?

Speaker 2:

It's such a good question that is not an easy question. I think, if you think about an economic sense, if you said who's a tech company?

Speaker 1:

in Australia.

Speaker 2:

It was really funny we actually had some polling when we first started to understand the community's awareness of tech and tech companies, and if you asked an average Australian, a lot of people would tell you Harvey Norman, because people think that's where I buy my tech, that's where I buy my TV or my phone or what I think about as consumer technology. Much fewer people would have said Atlassian or Camber, but they're two of our top tech companies and, I think, by any definition pretty successful ones. But what we tend to think about is a tech. We think about direct tech companies at the Tech Council, which are companies that are active in the tech ecosystems. They might be a software company or a deep tech company or a space company, and also people who are working deeply in the ecosystem like investors and advisors. And that's for us, the direct tech sector in Australia, but it can be very broad in what people are doing.

Speaker 2:

And then we think about the indirect tech sector sitting outside that which is companies right across the economy, who are often still very big adopters and, in some cases, developers of tech. So for example, commonwealth Bank is the biggest employer of software engineers in the country, but my company's government, they're all kind of major users and employers in the tech workforce so that's sort of part of the broader tech sector. But for us that direct tech sector is those core firms in the ecosystem.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and which firms have been really successful as global champions, because if you think about Samsung's and your Apple's, which have been champions from particular countries, who's been really successful from Australia's point of view?

Speaker 2:

I think a really interesting thing about what Australia's got in tech, which I don't think we celebrate enough in their pre-shared non-syncances of the country, is a very amazing software development and particularly enterprise software development. Like, if you look at over the last couple of decades, which is when our local tech sector is really blossomed, the single biggest sub-sector in terms of money raise, startups created, you know companies scale hands down is enterprise support. So in Atlassian, if you think about you know employment hero or those kinds of you know culture apps or safety culture, that is that business model and that type of company is what Australia's proven to be really exceptional at building here and growing. Related to that is FinTech, like that's another really big segment and I think even the concentration of banking and financial services in the broader economy is probably no surprise. That's been another one. I think what we've, what we're still trying to crack, is the more physically based tech sub-industries of the deep tech companies, because we know we're incredible at research in Australia.

Speaker 2:

We have, you know, will Cost University. We've done a lot of great research, but we probably haven't yet scaled the kind of globally successful companies that have more of a manufacturing basis.

Speaker 1:

So I think that's the sort of next big challenge for Australia, and where do you think we're most vulnerable to foreign disruption? So I mean, one of the things that we supposed to be thinking about in this building is where are the risks of technology, where politicians are good at identifying opportunities, but where do you see the risks to our existing economy if we are not as adaptive as we could be?

Speaker 2:

I think there's two types of risks that we face with technology. There's this big. A lot of people think about what they call technonationalism and the rise of technonationalism, so that interweaving of the geopolitical and economic kind of considerations. I think we face a risk in Australia of falling behind because what we're seeing is a lot of countries, even allied nations, whether that's the US or the UK, for example, other Western democracies just really doubling down on building their local tech ecosystems and building sovereign capabilities and tech and investing huge amounts of funding and a world warping like what we have been investing, and they're doing it out of speed that is also outpacing us.

Speaker 2:

So we have one risk, which isn't so much about whether other nations are allies of Australia or not, which is simply just falling behind the rest of the world because of the extent and the speed with which others are starting now to invest in that sector. That's sort of saying that Australia isn't doing that so you call technonationalism. Who's big?

Speaker 1:

there other than the.

Speaker 2:

US yeah if you look at, most countries are doubling down on it. So the US, the UK, the EU has been doing it. So you know France or Germany, if you look at Japan, if you look at Singapore, china, like a classic example. So Canada has been making some big amounts around AI and quantum and things like that.

Speaker 2:

So I think it's just an increasing feature of how people are coming to think about both security and economic policy. But then I think there's a second risk, which is around foreign intervention or disruption, and that could be to physical supply chains, but it can also be, I think, cyber security. Obviously, we've seen like a growing prevalence of attacks and we've seen greater variety in the types of attacks and some of those attacks being enabled by technological development. So you know there was sort of a focus in the last week or so on, you know, the use of gen, of AI, to basically try and industrialise fishing attacks, for example. So I think that's the second sort of threat that we're going to have to be sort of more alert to and aware of and prepared for.

Speaker 1:

But on that first one, I mean, what is it that we should be doing inside the boughs of government to identify the again the opportunities and the risks here? Because when we had the Reserve Bank Governor before estimates last week, I asked the governor about the central bank digital currencies worth that the RBA is doing and I've reviewed that potentially there could be a great risk if a foreign state wanted to seed a CBDC into the Pacific, where people are not heavily banked but they're heavily phoned, they've got iPhones and they've got Samsung phones. You very easily see currencies be replaced by digital currency and that may not be good for us from a strategic point of view and very bad for an economic point of view. So it wasn't clear to me whether the RBA was looking at that. Maybe it's not part of their job, but who is doing that work? You think for Australia?

Speaker 2:

That's a really, really good question, and I'm not sure that someone is doing that work in that specific use case to be honest but because I think it's. I think in Australia we've grown more accustomed to thinking about mitigating the domestic risks of technologies as opposed to thinking about how the use of technology can create opportunity or sort of be the prevention of a difference forming and I think so it's getting out of that mindset.

Speaker 2:

AI is a great example where, if you look at the executive order that President Biden handed down last week, it does have a theme around regulation, but there's also a theme around economic opportunity and how they're going to grow the development of AI and enable more people to work in that field in the US, and that it also looks again at the workforce and how you've got skills, so it's thinking about it in that comprehensive way, and I think we're just not always in the mode of thinking about that, so we might see some additional assets, the risk you have to regulate, as opposed to a piece of technology that we were developing in here rolling it out around, you know, nations around us.

Speaker 1:

that might actually become a sort of a way of foreclosing others, but it does concern me that we appear to be back into our old government silos, that the economic policy looked at by the Treasury and the geopolitical strategy she's looked at by the Foreign Office or the Foreign Affairs Department, maybe the Home Office, and then we're not talking to one another.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think. Look, I think there's always been this debate in tech policy about you know, how much do you centralise it? To what extent do you coordinate between different departments and different agencies? And my view is that it's actually very hard to centralise everything just because tech affects so many different areas of policy. And but I do think that taking a more coordinated, deliberate, strategic approach and like thinking about opportunity as well as thinking at risk is just so vital, and, you know, it may not always be the same minister or agency doing that coordination because it could kind of depend on what the core issue really is.

Speaker 2:

Like you can imagine, if it's fundamentally a security issue, perhaps it is best to apply a deep matter of affairs and it's fundamentally an economic reform, maybe you know Treasury Department of Industry takes a lead. But I think you have to. You cannot do it department by department, like you have to start thinking about this. Tech policy questions are more holistic.

Speaker 1:

So what are your top two issues today, as you walk around the Parliament House camp, but what are the things you're saying to members of Parliament?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I um, it's probably three, if that's okay, three's, good Three's good.

Speaker 2:

No more than three, though. Yeah, we're thinking a lot about so three things Like we have a big focus still on tech jobs and how we get more people in Australia trained for them, and how we fix our migration system to better enable us to access global specialist skills. We just know that's something we haven't done well in the last decade or two in Australia, and so we just need to get it right this time round. The second thing we talk about a lot is getting funding mechanisms right and really thinking through the economic policy settings that we have when it comes to both developing technology in Australia and adopting technology, particularly at a time when we've got activity in a 60 year low. We just think you're really thinking through how tech is going to help with that challenge is vital.

Speaker 2:

And then the third thing that we're talking to people about is regulation, but in particular AI, because that's such a hot topic at the moment, and just how, in Australia, we can come up with our own version, if you like, of the executive order that the US put out of the UK's AI strategy. Okay.

Speaker 1:

So everyone's talking about AI. At the moment, that's the hot topic. So what should Australia? If you're running the show now, we put you on the big plane and you can fly around the world and do the big job? What would you when you came back? What are the couple of things you do on AI?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I feel like there's a jaw on there, but I love the question I am. The thing that I would do is this I would just take a leaf out of the book of the US or the UK. Right, I didn't think we actually have to reinvent the wheel in Australia. There's some really good examples of how other governments have thought about this, and so what I would do is publish a statement by the government on how we're going to approach AI Australia because that's basically what the executive order is, or what the UK strategy is.

Speaker 2:

And I think that's helpful because people don't know we're actually doing quite a lot in some areas.

Speaker 1:

in other areas Kind of the whole government statement.

Speaker 2:

But I call the government statement and just say this is how Australia is going to approach AI and I would have three themes to it. I would have one piece on what is the economic opportunity where they are in Australia. How are we going to position ourselves to be a leader in certain areas like what investment are we going to make? How are we going to fund research? You know, where do we want to develop sovereign data sets or sovereign capabilities? And also how are we going to incentivise the adoption of it? Because, fundamentally, a lot of AI will not be risky technology. It will be productivity enhancing technology.

Speaker 1:

So I think we just need to get that right.

Speaker 2:

I think we need one strand of it focused on workhorse, and I think we need a really good piece of workhorse analysis to sort of forecast what are the likely opportunities and the risks and to prepare for that. And then I think the third thing is having an approach or regulation, and how I would design that is to establish an expert advisory body, because I think very often people are trying to develop regulations, that technologies that are quite hard to understand. If you don't give regulators access to expert advice, you're making their life harder. I would take a whole the government coordinated approach because we have a lot of existing law both general law and sexual law that already applies and just work out.

Speaker 2:

Where do people need better guidance on the workhorse.

Speaker 1:

So you've got a statement.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

What's two?

Speaker 2:

So within that is like economic policy yeah.

Speaker 1:

You got a statement and policies and then you've got your coordination.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and then I would identify sort of the areas of the existing law we need clarification and then also areas where you know you need an amendment.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so you're not lurching to regulation.

Speaker 2:

No, I think, because we do actually have a pretty strong existing framework.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

But in some cases, like saying, with privacy, we know that makes you updated right. So that is sort of that is in train, or that liability law you don't think needs to be clarified, but I think starting there is much more sensible and, frankly, that is again how the US and the UK approach. You know, I think the more we align with our major trading partners and security partners, yeah, I mean I like your idea of bringing together all the different bodies of government.

Speaker 1:

I mean, one thing I've learned in my four years here in this job is that you can have the best law in the world, but who cares unless the law is administered properly and or enforced. And so bringing the agencies along as part of that would be essential, because in a lot of these areas of R&D tax arrangements and I mean there are so many different moving parts.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

As you say, my technology itself doesn't really have any home. That's it. So you really need to work. You've got to be a massive collaborator.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and also, like it's so Sort of funny, gets me with this fear with AI, right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, this fear that if you design AI system, it might that people say that they want AI to take you in seriously, but not literally. Yeah, and what I mean by that is like if you give an order to a piece AI, I could program it and say you say, hey, come clean up my office, put everything aside, but it takes it so literally you come back and you find like your soaps being moved and you, but it's like I think there's actually the same. It's the same issue when it comes to drafting legislation that once you make the rule, the rules are all right. And if, when you wrote the rule, you didn't realize that Technology was gonna work, a different way or it's gonna affect different things like you still made that law and you still, you know, potentially gonna have penalties in place, and people don't do it.

Speaker 2:

And so I think the hard thing with AI at the moment is it's moving so fast and People don't always, and it's so ubiquitous that I think it's actually difficult for legislators To be sitting down right now and drafting really novel laws. And that is also, I think, that expert group is important, because being able to understand when the technology is at a point where you can find and you can legislate it versus when you might want to use a standard or something that's more flexible until you get to the point where the technology of the practice is certain enough to write rules about it.

Speaker 2:

I think that's actually going to be a real art For making policy in this space.

Speaker 1:

So that's good. So basically, you think we're in a position where we could still be a leading jurisdiction on AI, but we have to get our positioning to get that in one place.

Speaker 2:

I think that would just be a great first step and you know, the reality is we're not going to be a country that will be at the full front of developing foundational models. That's like that ship has sailed right. But we know that we're an economy that's great at doing enterprise software, great doing fintech, like a lot of the sort of secondary users of that kind of technology, but are then taking it and customizing it, and we know we can be a big adopting nation, so yeah, I think it's also just being smart about having a policy that Manages the risk we generally have agency over, yeah, but also doesn't lose like a good tune.

Speaker 1:

It's funny I was saying to a couple of Americans the other day about the corporations acts 2001 yeah, they were in about nine to ten months of having been in or passed by the parliament that we are. So it's this problem with the electronic transactions. Yes, they needed to get the actual pen on the paper to get the document executed. Yeah, whereas I, electronic execution Would be appropriate and the only way around it was it's passing you law because there was no red-making power. So it took 20 years in a COVID crisis to get that fix, so we don't want to lock things in any particular time-tap.

Speaker 1:

what do we?

Speaker 2:

And that's, I think, the challenge.

Speaker 2:

Like you know, it's interesting there's a debate about transparency at the moment and whether you should give reasons for the AI, which in principle can be really important I can support. But you know I was giving someone an example. If you thought about the health system, if someone's using AI in a diagnostic system, say to do to look at scans and give a diagnosis, that might be a really important moment when being able to explain how to use matters. If a person's using it, though, in a triage system in an emergency maybe they have a dynamic checklist as someone comes in to make sure that all the steps that have been followed or the diagnosis is particular to their gender say, that might not be the moment to be giving a meaningful answer.

Speaker 2:

If you're using it in the health system to optimise ambulance routing, again, like, that's just not a time when explaining how the system works when you're on a trip or local is right, and so I think it's just recognising that what it's used across so many settings. You have to be really thoughtful in the rules that you set, because otherwise you can create as many complications as you can fix problems.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, okay, so I want to take you on to where we are now as a country relative to others. So I mean, as you say, we have a lot of advantages. We have some issues we need to work through. Yeah, how are we going with attracting capital when people all over this country, who are we competing with at the moment and who have we lost business to from time to time?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a really good question. I think, australia, when we're competing, we're typically competing. We're sort of competing globally, probably with other Western democracies, but it comes to talent and, to some degree, capital.

Speaker 2:

So, with the US or the UK, like, if you look at the patterns of who invests in Australia, the five eyes nations sort of dominate, so like 75% of 80% of the capital that's sort of coming in for the tech sector of Australia. So you know, it's usually, I mean, though, the US sort of, you know, historically has been the biggest source of VC capital, though China is obviously growing as an investor and you do see some from other areas. But so I think you know Australia is competing with the US, with the UK, with Canada, like to a degree New Zealand, because we're kind of co-located, and to a degree also, then, I think, other nations in that region, particularly some of Singapore. So but what makes us competitive can be different depending on the comparison, because I think you know if someone might choose to invest in Australia because it's a stable, sovereign nation increasing, like some of the factors that influence in the investment might be as much jeopardy for security based now as it is purely economic analysis.

Speaker 2:

So but I think our challenge is that there's reasons why it's still harder to invest in Australia or to move here versus rest of us because we are further away. We can be a small market, like it's just you know it's tougher and so we can't.

Speaker 2:

We have to always work to get that capital, work to get the best held, and I think that means we have to remove as many of those barriers as you know, particularly needless barriers and things like having, you know, more skills track for our migration system where you can guarantee people get their visa process in certain number of days. That's just a facet of a lot of other overseas nations for competing with, and even though we've actually brought at the time, so we're processing things down in Australia, we can't give the guarantee that others have so just things like that, I think going forward are going to be really vital to fix.

Speaker 1:

I think when I first came across your predecessor organisation, the major issue was around the R&D tax offset. Now, at the time, I was chairing and acquiring into Fintech, which made a lot of recommendations about this, and we looked at the software issue in particular. I think there are a lot of organisations that wanted to do business in Australia but they found that the R&D tax arrangements were very hard going. So how's that going now? Because we had the department come to estimates last week and send the estimates, that is, and they said it was all pretty hunky-dory. So what do you say?

Speaker 2:

Well, the interesting thing with our ETI is that the primary type of investment people are making that qualifies on the scheme is in software.

Speaker 1:

That's a good sign, isn't it? It's a good sign.

Speaker 2:

I think it shows that our economy is digitising. But it was a scheme that was never designed for software or digital right. It's designed more for linear, physically based, scientific. There's always been that fundamental tension in the scheme. I think there are, and so you know it remains a scheme that is very important, like if you spread all the startups and startups they tell you that it's one of the more important ways that you can get funding. But it's often also one that I think can be still improved in terms of the experience of people using it.

Speaker 2:

So I think things like the clarity about what can and can't qualify, the time frames for getting decisions, just the sort of user experience.

Speaker 2:

Although it can be very costly to startups and startups because it can be such a complex process, they have to go on hire, you know, on a accounting firm or other intermediaries to do it so just like I think the more we can fix those pain points still then, the more we're going to make it easier for people to undertake R&D and we know we're kind of low in terms of the proportion of R&D spend that goes on in the Australian economy as a charity. P versus Lover Nations, you've got to get an UPS. I think that's a pretty straightforward place to start.

Speaker 1:

But if we're trying to attract tech people to our country to establish a business, isn't the R&D tech software still our best? There's no one of our main things we have to offer.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, the other thing is like um.

Speaker 1:

Not right.

Speaker 2:

No, no. Well, I think what I'm saying is I don't think a lot of people, I don't know that you attract entrepreneurs often to come to your no, I keep them. Yeah, exactly no, because if you actually look at the data, you know they did this experimental migration system where they started giving away, like entrepreneurs, visas not going to be away, obviously, but you know, offering entrepreneurs visas and they're really unsubscribe, right, I think.

Speaker 1:

This is the pay to bill thing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and even like it's been experimented with a couple of times through a promise of migration, and so I think I said it wasn't, yeah, very often when people do it like it just hasn't had huge takeout.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

And I think it's because, if you think about how hard it is to found a business and how much you're aligning on your networks and your customer relationships and getting funding, like you sort of more typically do that probably in a kind of country where you have those supports, so I think the RDIT is like more important to keep people here, because if you can't get access to that sort of funding when you're trying to scale, particularly before perhaps you've got, you know, any significant amount of VC funding or grants funding, can be like quite uncertain and hard to get. That's where the RDIT is so important. So you know, getting it right is just like vital to keep growing that next generation of companies. And I think the more we get into deep check and it's a bit more capital intensive, the more that is going to be the difference between a company being able to scale versus the company just not having the capital to make the prototype like get the next factory and just either offshoring or, you know, giving up.

Speaker 1:

Well, they gave very good evidence last week that the issues with the RDIT had been solved. I wasn't so convinced about the evidence around the space industry and I understand that you don't directly represent the space companies, but I mean the whole idea of going to space or being involved in space is as a knock-on effect to the rest of the economy, isn't it? I'm watching a Netflix documentary the moment about the Apollo program and a massive dividend to the US and to the global economy from doing that.

Speaker 1:

So, I mean, how do you see the space piece fitting to your world?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's really interesting. So the thing about the space industry is it's like it's different specialisation, like water tech for funds, and I think so there is part of what we're going to be very good at.

Speaker 2:

We have advantages in, like, historically there's things like, you know, the ground stations and monitoring is something that, just due to our location in the world and clear skies and the sort of satellite infrastructure and infrastructure has been here like, we actually tend to be pretty competitive there. And then, you know, when it comes to things like geospatial analytics, obviously we've got good expertise there and the fact that we've got, you know, big mining industries and agricultural industries and other non-space industries are better from that, like that's the sort of natural strength.

Speaker 2:

So then the question has sort of been can we also be good at things like, you know, low orbit satellites and some of the more infrastructure components of the space? Industry and I think you know, we've seen some pretty amazing companies like you're more in fleet make a goal here in Australia, so I definitely think it's something that's an important feature of it.

Speaker 1:

Well, isn't it incredible what Starlink and all that have been able to do?

Speaker 2:

offshore.

Speaker 1:

There's no reason why we couldn't do that right.

Speaker 2:

Well, and there's, you know, companies doing like fleet or, you know, give more space in the Gold Coast, like we've actually got some pretty amazing companies that are doing some interesting stuff there. But I'd also say there can be more space than just you know the launch of a rocket or the satellites. I think some of those opportunities around the analytics are really interesting for us like analyzing the satellite data, not just sort of building the rocket satellite.

Speaker 1:

And it's in Adelaide or it's in South Australia, which I really funny. I've had an interesting journey of my life, I've come to really like South Australia. How do you feel about South Australia?

Speaker 2:

Well, I'm from South Australia.

Speaker 1:

Are you from?

Speaker 2:

there, you just have to ask me to say the words, to be cool or something.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you a crow or a power?

Speaker 2:

Well, this is.

Speaker 1:

You have a VFL tape no.

Speaker 2:

I'm close with my mum and her family grew up in Port Adelaide, so it's actually this issue that's kind of driven our family yeah.

Speaker 1:

So they were the magpies.

Speaker 2:

They were the magpies, so they would be.

Speaker 1:

The tradition to the power.

Speaker 2:

Yes, they went to power and I grew up supporting North Adelaide, which was a great disappointment to my relatives and one half of my family, and then I moved to the Crows when they came into the AFL.

Speaker 1:

What's North Adelaide? Is that Melbourne colours, or is that?

Speaker 2:

That was red and white, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Red and white yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so no blue, but the Crows were obviously the very tasteful blue, red and yellow. But yeah, we're a bit of a mixed family because my partner was from Brisbane, so he's from Brisbane. My son was born in Hawthorne, so he was a bit of a Hawks fan, so we do spread the love of the AFL.

Speaker 1:

I think the umpires helped Colleen Wood win the flying over of Brisbane.

Speaker 2:

We'll be drawn on that point in the last two seconds so before you go.

Speaker 1:

I just want to ask you about so, when you're walking around Parliament House and you're going and seeing all these terribly exciting colleagues right now, is everyone asking you about AI? Is that the one thing everyone's asking you about?

Speaker 2:

Yeah well, I think actually not even just asking. I reckon one of the most common comments I get is I've been thinking of studying an inquiry in AI. I've already got one. You got there first, yeah like it is but I understand that because it is actually a really groundbreaking technology. It can have a lot of impact. People are trying to get the head around. So I'm actually I'm like when I'm working on the building, a lot of colleagues ask me about AI. That's a good thing, right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's good.

Speaker 2:

We're actually having a proper conversation about it.

Speaker 1:

It's good. So what do you read? This is the last, last question I just want to know. So what do you read to inform yourself? So, when you get these questions from these, these pollies, you've got a decent answer.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm a total nerd, so like my favorite thing at the summer year is planning my, my like summer holiday, but. I think there's lots of books. I've been reading Rebooting AI it's a really interesting one and I was just reading on the weekends Stuart Russell's Human Compatible, like. There's a lot of, you know, I think, pretty thoughtful books that have come out globally around it. But then sometimes, you know, I just try to take my mind off things. So I mean it would bring that, you know yeah yeah, well, that's good.

Speaker 1:

Well, you don't make it feel too bad then. Without that, at least it's a pretty nice list.

Speaker 2:

No, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Of course, if people want to just do the shortcut, they can always just read the economists. That's where the the shortcut people like me go If you just need to know what's happening in the world you only have time to do that you can kind of skim the economists and get a pretty good sense of it, I think.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think that's a pretty good source of information. So we tried to do our own research at the Tate Council. So we've been putting out a bunch. We had a we're quite out on doing AI and the economic opportunity for Australia. We've done one recently called Shots on Gold, which is about what's been the history, the recent history, of the ability of Australian firms to get funding and how we compare the rest of the world. So if you can please, I'm going to read it.

Speaker 1:

Okay, there you go. Well, Kate Bamford, thanks very much for coming today.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much.

Speaker 1:

Thank you.

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