Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes floats ideas for filling looming $70bn coal hole
Mike Cannon-Brookes has some ideas on how Australian can plug its looming $70bn coal hole.
Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes believes Australia has to prioritise research and development, kickstart manufacturing and ramp up exports of other resources to plug to a $70 billion dollar future hole in economic output left by a move away from coal.
The billionaire told the Morgan Stanley Australia Summit policymakers should rethink the national energy debate by considering new ways to export solar and wind power and even build mobile phones, solar panels and batteries domestically.
“We ship all of the raw ingredients out of mining to do all these things, this should power Australia’s economy, no pun intended, for the next 20 plus years,” Mr Cannon-Brookes said of resources such as nickel, silver, lithium, iron ore and rare earth metals.
“It just takes political will, popular opinion and a change of mindset about how we think about exporting the sun, exporting the wind.
“We should be thinking about that, these are resources.”
Mr Cannon-Brookes said Australia was a strong export nation, albeit with a reliance on gas and coal.
“In somewhere between 15 and 25 years all the coal is going to be done it’s going to be worth zero,” he added.
“It’s a $70bn dollar industry for Australia. If I was running Australia as a business I’d think … I’d better do something about that.”
Mr Cannon-Brookes said outside of sub-Saharan Africa Australia held the mantle for the globe’s sunniest country.
“We are also have one of the best wind resources on the planet, so we should be harnessing sun and wind as a country and exporting it.”
Mr Cannon-Brookes noted Australia’s technology industry did “bat above” its weight but lamented federal government cuts in R&D tax incentives in the last two federal budgets.
He described the government’s approach as “punching us (technology industry) in the eye”.
On Atlassian’s R&D, Mr Cannon-Brookes said allocating the software giant’s budget, which is growing by $100m a year, presented challenges, but ultimately was an inherent part of being a fast-growing technology company.
“You’ve got to make hard decisions. We always have to do think long term, short term, and medium term. We tend to obviously look for opportunities and growth and where we think there’s innovation,” Mr Cannon-Brookes said.
He sees Atlassian’s biggest opportunity as the transition from supplying services and workplace tools to technology workers to targeting a broader segment of more than 800 million “knowledge workers” that rely on collaboration.
Atlassian has 144,000 customers and is targeting what he calls the Fortune 500,000.
“You could argue we are a third of the way,” Mr Cannon-Brookes said.
He added there was “no secret sauce” required to build Australia’s biggest technology company, which has included organic growth and acquisitions.
“We’ve got a great track record and we don’t plan to destroy that.”