Michael Kcroger retweetledi

Liberal senator Jane Hume: "We should be encouraging more start-ups."
I'm getting sick of this discussion about "start-ups".
They mean modern "tech" companies that hope to spark a stock market frenzy that makes the founders billionaires.
They don't mean manufacturing enterprises that could help reindustrialise Australia.
We send those offshore.
Here's an example:
In the 1990s a Melbourne engineer invented an oil-free compressor.
He couldn't get any bank or investor in Australia to back him.
A Canadian government development bank offered to invest in him on the condition that he set up production in Montreal. So he did.
Later an American company bought his operation and moved it to Tallahassee, Florida, where a little while later it was bought by giant Danish compressor company Danfoss.
The average salary at the Tallahassee plant is US$90K.
They could have been jobs in Australia, but we don't have a government development bank, or banks with vision, or any inclination to back real industries.
However, we do want young people to believe if only they could create the right app they could become billionaires.

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