Grant Petty, CEO of Melbourne-based film tech company Blackmagic Design, says he is excited by the skills and training announcement in the 2021 Australian Federal Government budget, as well as the government’s digital infrastructure announcement.
The Australian Government has announced it would be extending its JobTraining fund, which provides affordable training courses to young people.
It also announced nearly AUD$1.2 billion in funding for the Digital Economy Strategy, which targets investment in emerging technologies, building digital skills and encouraging business investment.
According to Mr Petty, “The skills and training announcement is very exciting because the only way to transition to a digital economy is to have hundreds of thousands of qualified young people who can launch the next generation of startup companies.
“I think this is exactly where the funding needs to go, to give people the same opportunities I had starting out, no matter their background. Based on the taxes that Blackmagic Design pays each year, it would only take a few dozen successful startups to pay for this spending. What an exciting initiative. It could transform Australia.”
He also praised the Government’s digital infrastructure initiative.
“The digital infrastructure funding is an important initiative,” said the Blackmagic Design CEO. “I believe that the world is in an intellectual property war and so far, Australia has been badly losing, or not even aware intellectual property exists. Strengthening the cyber security technology will be an important step to protecting the hard work of thousands of engineers and artists in Australia.
“I think the Artificial Intelligence Centres are a very good idea and I expect it could revolutionise education in Australia. Blackmagic Design is already heavily involved in using AI for image processing in our products and we have experience in this area. Back in the 1970’s Dartmouth College developed the BASIC programming language and it became the standard language used on all early 1980’s personal computers.
“Those students went on to change the world and the US dominated personal computing. Now, these Artificial Intelligence Centers could do the same for Australia. It’s hard to know what the future innovations could be, but having this technology available to “play” with is the first step in discovering that future.”
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