AARON VIOLI
FEDERAL MEMBER FOR CASEY
SHADOW MINISTER FOR THE DIGITAL ECONOMY
SHADOW MINISTER FOR SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR CYBER SECURITY
SPEECH
NATIONAL INNOVATION POLICY FORUM, NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, CANBERRA
13 October 2026
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Well, thank you Jane to yourself and the team at the Cooperative Research, this is important work. As an extrovert and as a politician, I fundamentally believe that conversations and getting together to discuss the challenges and opportunities we have is how we solve the big problems. I was there last night at the showcase, it was great to see so much technology, so many opportunities, things that can be solved. So given this is my first time addressing the forum and I was lucky enough to be appointed in February this year from Angus Taylor, I want to share a little bit about my background, why I’m so passionate about science, technology, innovation, my family story which Jane mentioned, but also where I see the current environment and where we can see it going forward. I know the minister had to leave, but I did want to acknowledge how I view the role in opposition. It’s finding areas where we can agree, but then holding the government to account where we believe they have fallen short and I’ll touch on both of those. I’ll quickly touch to start with on where we can agree. I note the minister talked about the importance of AI training here in Australia and that’s something the Coalition is committed to and believe in as well and want to work with the government on that. I’m lucky enough to be on the bipartisan Joint AI Committee that is looking at AI and how we can unlock the opportunities, but how we can have AI training here in Australia. And as part of that AI training, there’s obviously national security opportunities, there’s economic opportunities, but there is also significant research opportunities in making sure that you and others in the industry and in academia can get access to compute and how we can use that to really drive AI sovereignty and innovation here in Australia.
I’m very lucky to be the Shadow Minister for Science, Technology, Innovation, also the Digital Economy and Cyber Security. So three separate portfolios that are also connected and I’ll take you through how we as a Coalition are thinking about that. But firstly, my background, I was lucky enough to have spent 15 years in the private sector, including about four years at a tech startup before I left that company to become a member of Parliament. And through that experience and through my family’s experience, I have a fundamental belief that all the challenges we face here in Australia and across the country across the world will be solved by technology. History shows us that it is what will be driven to solve these problems that we face.
And the opportunities are huge as we look at AI, quantum, the way forward. I had that experience working in the tech sector seeing how we could solve some problems in the real world, and that’s how I think the digital economy really fits. But I’m also proud of my grandmother, Loretto Kerley. She passed at 97. You would politely say, well she was a force of nature that did not suffer fools, so we got a lot of straight talk when we were growing up. But she was the first female chemical engineer to graduate from Swinburne University in 1939.
She used to talk about how she had to leave her exams to go across the road to another building to go to the bathroom because there was no female toilets in the engineering building back in 1939. So think about the drive and the endeavour that took to do that and then think about the life lessons that I would have learned growing up. She was an amazing woman. But the reason I love to share that story, she also worked on an important project. During World War II, paper was in short supply here in Australia and we didn’t, we relied on paper to communicate much like the internet today. So she worked in a private enterprise using her academic experience to build sovereign capability here in Australia and develop Australian-made paper to make sure that we could support the war effort, continue to grow as an economy. That’s a story my family’s very proud of.
But it’s an example of how science, technology, innovation, academia, and the private sector working together can solve the challenges that we face.
So how do we as a Coalition think about innovation, science, technology? As I said, I’ve got those three portfolios deliberately, because science, technology, innovation is how we create the products that will solve the problems. But the reason we added the digital economy to that portfolio is we can have great ideas as we already do, but unless we can move them to roll out at scale and at a commercial value, we’re not going to be able to solve the problems that we face as a nation. So while the digital economy is very much about the online world, the reality is all of our economy is online. So I think of the digital economy as moving those ideas that you create into opportunities in the commercial world to make sure we can roll them out at scale.
But we also deliberately and importantly included cybersecurity as a portfolio. Because the reality is, as we transform to digital, as technology takes off, if we cannot keep that data and keep those products safe, Australians will lose trust in technology and will not want to engage with the technology. At a time when we need to acknowledge that trust in our institutions, in our democracy, in our members of parliament, in technology is at a low ebb, we need to make sure that we’re investing in cybersecurity. I also use that as a term for not just cybersecurity, but resilience to make sure that our technology works. We learned that in many different ways, but we had an example in Victoria where there was an outage through Telstra, people had come down from the country to go spend the day in Melbourne on the V/Lines. Because of that outage, they were no longer able to get the train back home, and it meant people had to potentially stay in the city, catch an uber. Their lives were significantly disrupted because of a technological outage. And I don’t think if you told anyone back then that losing an outage of Telstra would affect their train line, they would know that there was any connection there. It’s just one example of how fragile the system is and how we need to make sure that we invest in resilience, cybersecurity, and redundancy within the system.
But acknowledge the tension point. There is a tension point that every time we invest in resilience, there is a cost. And as we seek economies of scale in a high inflationary environment, it’s about getting those trade-offs right and finding where we can build the resilience to have trust while also rolling it out at an affordable price. Because you can have the best product in the world, it can solve a great problem, but if we can’t roll it out at a commercial value and making sure your organisations also get a fair return on investment, well then we’re not going to get the scale that we need.
We need to acknowledge that the current system is not working. There’s been a few stats, I’ll add a couple more because I believe we need to confront the world as it is, not as we’d like it to be so we can move forward. So national investment in R&D has fallen to just 1.69% of GDP. That’s below the OECD average.
Since 2008, business investment in R&D has dropped by 35%. I know Sam is here from Conry Tech, who also happens to be a constituent of mine, so it’s good to see him here. And he and his team had a report out recently which really brought home the issues that we face. Australia lost more manufacturers in 2025-26 than any year since the 2008 financial crisis.
It’s a staggering stat. I think the scary part is it’s not surprising. You live this every day, so I’m not going to talk to you about how tough your business environment is because you do it every day, but it is the most significant challenge we face. I mean with businesses all the time and hear the challenges around inputs, the prices, and it is something that we need to address.
So, we have two options. We sit and wallow in the challenges we face as a nation and globally, or we do something about it. And I’m always an optimist, and as I said, I believe the people in this room and technology will solve the challenges that we face.
So how do we go about that?
I don’t believe picking winners is the right way to do it. We have to look at industries and opportunities that are crucial to our national security. We have to look at opportunities where we can have a competitive advantage, and we do have to look at ideas and opportunities and technologies where the government has to step in.
But the reality is, a rising tide lifts all boats. If we do not get the fundamentals of the economy right, we cannot succeed as a nation.
Because what is business looking for to invest? You’re looking for confidence. You want to make sure that you’ve actually got the capital to invest and that you will get a return on investment.
You’re competing for talent every day with other countries. People are more mobile than ever and are prepared to move.
And I spend a lot of time in this portfolio thinking about the valley of death and how we can build the bridge from ideas to commercialisation. I’ll leave that in the private sector.
I spent time working in my startup making sure that we had the runway so we didn’t run out of cash. Because if we ran out of cash, that was the end of the business. Cash flow is the lifeblood of an organisation.
And unfortunately, we’ve seen a situation where I’ve been thinking about how we build the bridge, and to be blunt, the budgetary decisions of this government have destroyed that bridge and it has made the valley of death so much harder. When it comes to the R&D tax incentive, I’ve lost count of the numbers of conversations that I’ve had with businesses, with industry about how capital is already leaving this country, people are already moving offshore because of the R&D tax incentive changes.
And at a time when we’ve seen these statistics, at a time of an economic challenge and crisis in our country, why you would make it harder for businesses to invest in R&D defies logic. This is a challenge that we will continue to address and continue to hold this government to account on.
When you look at the changes to the capital gains tax, these changes defy logic in my mind. It literally incentivises investors. The reality with these changes, as you all know, is if I have $100,000 to invest today and I have a choice between a big four bank or one of the two supermarkets, or a tech startup, these changes incentivise me to put that money into a big four bank because my return from that big four bank is not about capital growth, it is about the dividend that they return.
But if I put that $100,000 into a startup, the return from that startup is on the capital. You are hoping that the business will go from nothing to the next Canva, to the next Uber, to the next business solving our challenges. So this government has actively made it harder for startups to bring capital into their business. It defies belief, particularly at a time when productivity is below 5%, it is going backwards every year. And I’ve worked in large multinationals, we didn’t think about innovation too much, we thought about protecting our market share. And I’ve worked at a tech startup and a small business, and we thought every day about growing and innovating and creating new products. So that’s a challenge, that’s why the Coalition is committed to scrapping the capital gains tax.
But it’s not just the access to capital that these changes have made, it is also the perverse impact that it punishes young people and it punishes startups looking to bring talent into their company. When I left Mars Australia, I went to Ritual as a tech startup and I took stock options because I was backing myself and the company to create wealth, and many young people are doing that today, have made those choices. But again, these changes disincentivise those young people to join a startup. They’ll be taxed more by joining that startup and taking stock.
There are young Australians that are working at organisations that were just about to float on the stock exchange, that have seen the value of their stock options that they took halve because of the changes from this government. Many young people choose to work in startups because they see it as their opportunity to generate wealth, not make tens of millions, maybe make a couple of hundred thousand to get a deposit for their house.
But for startups, being able to offer stock options is so important because it extends your runway. You do not have the cash to compete with the high-end businesses, but you give them the hope to join the business, create the value. And it also connects the employer and the employee together to drive productivity, to drive innovation, and share the rewards if that company is successful.
I think the most disappointing thing about all those changes is the impacts that it’s going to have, and then you have a prime minister who says publicly to small businesses and to startups, “Well, it’s okay, if you don’t pay the tax every day, you pay it when you sell the company.” As I said at the time, “Genius, that’s the point.” That’s why people are upset because they have a plan to exit. So why are we not incentivising innovation at this time, and we’ll continue to hold the government to account when it comes to these changes.
That’s the negative, but there’s lots of positives. There’s AI, there’s quantum, as I said, technology will solve a lot of these challenges. But it’s about everyone working together. It’s about the government getting the settings right, it’s about the universities, academia, the private sector, working together to solve these problems. No one can solve it alone, we all need to put the shoulder to the wheel and get it done together.
Ultimately, creating this ecosystem is so important. It’s about big business supporting small businesses, about small startups becoming medium and large businesses, the universities turning ideas into commercial opportunities. I know as the Shadow Minister, I have a role to play, it’ll be driven by you all and your teams, but we have a role to play.
And I’ll finish, as my old boss used to remind me, we’ve got two ears and one mouth for a reason, so talk less and listen, which is a bit ironic given I’ve delivered this speech, but that’s an opening invitation to you all. I know having worked in the sector that the best ideas come from those on the front line, and that’s all of you. So my door’s always open to listen, to learn, to hear your ideas, and to see how together and through today, forums like today, we can solve the challenges that Australia and the globe face.
Good luck today, I hope it’s a fruitful and enjoyable conversation and look forward to engaging with you all for many months and years to come. Thank you very much.
