The Government Doesn’t Really Know What An Entrepreneur Is But It’s Giving Them $500m Anyway

What is an entrepreneur really? What is it that they start-up? If you know, can you please tell Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Treasurer Joe Hockey? That way they’ll know what they can spend almost half a billion dollars on in the Federal Budget. That’s right: without really knowing what they’re going to do with it, the government allocated $484 million to start-ups in the Budget last night.

Image: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

It’s called the Entrepreneur’s Infrastructure Programme, and it’s designed to “support the commercialisation of good ideas”, as well as fund job creation and the capability of small business. It’s also designed to allow start-ups to get proper business management advice from experts. It allocates 484.2 million over five years, with funding to start from 1 July.

Great! So what’s it going to be used for specifically? According to the Industry Minister, Ian MacFarlane, there’s still some thinking yet to be done on that one.

Minister MacFarlane in his statement last night said that final targets for the new Entrepreneur’s Infrastructure Programme are yet to be developed, and will be finalised in consultation with industry stakeholders.

So basically, we don’t know yet, but have some money anyway and we’ll figure it out in the end. Better to be seen helping rather than not help at all, I guess.

Interestingly, the help the government is providing is less than the industry was getting before under previous budgetary arrangements.

The Entrepreneur’s Infrastructure Programme was founded in the Budget less than a paragraph away from the note that all of Australia’s existing start-up support agencies will be killed off, including Commercialisation Australia.

Those agencies were all funded to the tune of $845.6 million, meaning that the government almost halved the support it’s providing to start-ups, which it’s still a little confused about anyway.

Hoo boy. [Business Insider]


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.