Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (14:32:32) — My question is to the Minister for Innovation and the Digital Economy and relates to medical technologies, including biotech and pharmaceuticals. I note that you made a statement that Victoria is one of the world’s leading locations for the development of these technologies and that it effectively has a head start in this field on the rest of the world. However, Victoria is losing high-growth opportunities to other states, such as Queensland and South Australia, which have aggressive relocation and expansion incentive programs which have been very successful in attracting investment from local and international companies. This is a separate issue to the work that LaunchVic is doing in their health tech arena, and I ask how the minister is addressing this.
Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (14:35:53) — Thank you, Minister. I will look forward to the feedback from the industry in response to those trade missions. Sadly you missed it, but I was at the women in biotech lunch last week. In speaking to the network there they indicated that they have got recent research that suggests a lack of critical mass of early stage seed funding in Victoria to undertake the product development activities, and this has resulted in a relatively subscale — in their own words — start-up sector. I know that LaunchVic is helping the health tech businesses to identify or locate investors — and I think that is a great thing — but what is the government doing to actually attract investors in Victoria in the first place?
