Attracting top-tier businesses and exceptional talent to Australia

By Peter Verwer, A.O.

2020 saw COVID 19 disrupting the world and upending markets, communities and business strategies, prompting the Australian Government to launch a powerful blueprint for economic growth – with the JobMaker Plan a key tool to help turbocharge our economy.

As part of this effort to generate thousands of quality jobs for Australians, the Prime Minister set up the Global Business and Talent Attraction Taskforce. He’s described our mission as “Australia’s brain gain”.

The Taskforce is a cross agency government initiative to bring the best and brightest businesses and talent to Australia. We are targeting high yield companies that can bring new technologies, cutting edge research and development as well as IP and capital to our shores.

Many of the planet’s most exciting firms and exceptionally talented individuals are re-examining the risks they face and taking a fresh look at their business models, strategies and future markets.

The Taskforce is taking advantage of this unique window to transform Australia into a more powerful magnet for marquee enterprises and exceptional individuals and reap the benefit of their ideas, capital, talent and networks.

This is a deliberately proactive effort. We want people with entrepreneurial energy and deep skill sets, who can drive innovation and create local jobs. We want the most successful companies with high growth potential and highly skilled people in future-focused industries to come to Australia and develop their ideas here.

We are looking for businesses that can make significant contributions to our economic recovery and long-term prosperity by building clusters or ecosystems of excellence in priority sectors, conducting cutting-edge research and development, and filling gaps in supply chains.

We want these apex enterprises to partner with local companies and institutions to help deliver our blueprint for economic growth.

These global firms and individuals can expand the channels of capital available, especially for co-investing with Australian business, and these firms and entrepreneurs can team up with Australian businesses to build bridges to international markets, opening up new export opportunities.

And most importantly for Australian industry, the work of the Taskforce will mean that accessing global talent will be easier than ever before.

Now is the time to capitalise on a disrupted and uncertain environment and promote Australia’s competitive advantages, particularly as a COVID success story.

A core feature of this approach is to identify and engage with the cream of the world’s thinkers, academics, cultural innovators and business moguls rather than wait for them to knock on our door.

The Taskforce is initially targeting the advanced manufacturing, financial services including Fintech and health and life sciences sectors as we play to our strengths.

We believe we can offer high value firms and individuals and attractive menu of financial and non-financial benefits. We can also offer senior executives, company staff and top tier talent flexible visa arrangements and fast track their transition into Australia and connect them with industry and supportive business ecosystems.

We are setting the bar high and we’re asking business, industry organisations and sector leaders to help us identify which enterprises and entrepreneurs they believe would turbocharge our economy and boost national prosperity.

The Global Business and Talent Attraction Taskforce looks forward to working with you to help achieve our national goals. To find out more go to www.GlobalAustralia.gov.au and follow us on LinkedIn.

The Taskforce is led by the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy on Global Business and Talent Attraction, Peter Verwer, AO.