Australia seeks ‘ideas boom’ with tax breaks, visa boosts

“What [Finance Minister] Mathias Cormann and I and the rest of the ERC have been doing for the last three many months has-been continuing to work on savings to ensure we can get the allot back to at least where it was in terms of the level it was [at the last budget] in May”.

The UK government has introduced a number of measures in recent years created to support entrepreneurs. It will be available for emerging entrepreneurs with innovative ideas and financial backing to develop their ideas in Australia.

The ambitious proposals come as Australia struggles to boost growth and find new revenue sources following a decade-long mining boom that has begun to fade as commodity prices retreat and demand from key buyer China eases.

“We understand that sometimes entrepreneurs will fail several times before they succeed — and will usually learn more from failure than from success”, Treasurer Scott Morrison said.

Australia has often been accused of failing to convert its research and inventions into commercially successful innovations.

Turnbull, a tech-savvy former businessman who became prime minister in September after beating his conservative Liberal Party colleague Tony Abbott in an internal ballot, said innovation was critical to the next wave of prosperity.

To overcome this, early-stage investors will receive a 20 per cent non-refundable tax offset based on the amount of their investment as well as a capital gains tax exemption.

Schools are to benefit from $48 million over five years spent on programs from teacher training to encouraging preschoolers to explore maths and technology.

However, the government has yet to say how it will fund its $1.1 billion innovation and science agenda launched on Monday. “The most valuable capital is human capital”, he told ABC Television last night.

The proposals were warmly welcomed by analysts, academics and the business community. Early stage investors in startups would be provided with tax concessions.

The production phase of the resources boom has a while to run, with coal and iron ore remaining the country’s biggest exports, but Australia is falling behind other economies that are more aggressively promoting high-tech exports.

He pointed out that the Agenda includes initiatives to foster new start-ups, help businesses to grow, and prepare young Australians for the opportunities of the future with the visa changes being introduced in the second half of 2016.