‘Orange is the new Palo Alto’: Why the next Atlassian, Canva will be from the bush

While Sydney and Melbourne still hold first and second place as Australian cities with the best start-up ecosystems, every Australian state has invested more money in recent years into boosting local start-up hubs, such as Byron Bay, Newcastle, Wagga Wagga and Bathurst in NSW; Geelong, Latrobe, and Mildura in Victoria; and Noosa, Ipswich and Rockhampton in Queensland.

During the pandemic, more than 11,000 Australians moved out of Australia’s capital cities in the September quarter of 2021 alone as the ubiquity of remote work allowed for people to seek more affordable housing outside the capital cities.

Morle acknowledged that tempting some to work in regional or rural areas was a “chicken and egg” challenge but played it down as an obstacle, saying workers from those communities would want to remain there.

“The end status, though, [is] that’s precisely where you will go, because that’s where those jobs are,” he said. “A lot of people that have the skills are not hot-shot entrepreneurs, they’re people that work for a coal mining company right now and they’re just amazing engineers, and they live in Mackay or Orange. They’re there, and we have to keep them there.”

Australia’s technology sector overall contributes about $167 billion or 8.5 per cent of Australia’s GDP, according to an August 2022 report by peak industry body Tech Council.

Key industry heavyweights from the agriculture sector have been pushing for Australia to invest more in local food manufacturing facilities to create greater profit streams from new industries, such as plant-based protein, cautioning against overreliance on selling raw commodities such as beef and wheat.

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