Government’s $120 million a year industry and innovation scheme is a mystery to businesses
A TURNBULL government “innovation” fund that costs $120 million a year, pays over $3 million annually to its fat cat executives, and burned $1 million to promote itself, remains unheard of by almost all of the businesses that could use it.
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A LITTLE-KNOWN Turnbull government “innovation” fund handing out more than $3 million annually to its fat cat executives, and which burned $1 million to promote itself, remains unheard of by almost all of the businesses that could use it.
A damning internal report — which itself cost $78,000 — shows 89 per cent of companies did not know the Industry Growth Centres scheme existed — even after being prompted about it.
The report reveals that although the program has run for years at a cost of $120 million, very few companies have even come into contact with any of the six government-owned companies set up to run the scheme.
The program, which began in 2014, is meant to help manufacturing, mining and pharmaceutical companies “drive cultural change and overcome barriers to innovation” through those six not-for-profit outfits.
The Daily Telegraph can reveal that while the top 10 executives across the program received $3 million in salaries last year, an April report prepared by Woolcott Research concluded awareness of the initiative was “non-existent”.
That’s despite the Industry Department spending $250,000 to pay consultants Porter Novelli to set up social media pages and book advertising, and $673,000 spent on public relations expenses.
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The report found 55 per cent of the 604 businesses surveyed had never been contacted by the scheme and 67 per cent of them had never been to meetings or conferences attended by representatives of the program.
The highest-paid executive is Jens Goennemann, who manages seven staff at the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre and who last year took home $485,000.
He is followed by Sue MacLeman, the chief executive of the 12-staff MTP Connect, who took home $433,000.
Kim Carr, Labor’s industry spokesman, said the scheme was just a “stream of underfunded, disconnected, piecemeal programs that no one has heard about”.
An Industry Department spokesman said the Woolcott research was conducted “just as the communications strategy was beginning” and as such was “not expected to show the result of how the strategy is performing. Rather it sets the benchmark against which further surveys are measured.”