We are unlikely to see similar growth-orientated tech and digital initiatives this year, not that the National Party, which owns most of the tech-related policy, isn’t interested in spending on tech, which it sees as an economic growth enabler.

All of that data we generate in our day-to-day lives is valuable grist to the mill for the tech companies seeking to train their AI systems.

Declining Investment, Shrinking Talent Pool. Over-Reliance on Imported Talent. The Untapped Potential of a Skilled Domestic Workforce. All isights from Toi Mai’s workforce development plan for digital technologies. I pose the argument for why we need to take this as seriously as government has taken the shortage of construction workers in recent years.

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The edtech sector is growing massively. The problem is that we don’t know very much about how effective many edtech apps or programs are – or if they are effective at all. And some effects may be negative.

Australia faces many of the problems we do at the moment, but is fundamentally a wealthier country, which is why the last few budgets there have seen left and right-leaning governments alike make some big investments in tech and knowledge economy initiatives they hope will lift salaries and high value exports in the longrun.