ALICIA PAYNE, MEMBER FOR CANBERRA: Good morning everyone. I'm Alicia Payne, the Member for Canberra, and it's great to be here in Fyshwick this morning with Minister for Industry, Science and Innovation Tim Ayres at WV Technologies. Thank you to Jamie Miller, Co‑founder, and the team for welcoming us an explaining the work to us this morning. 

Today, Tim is going to announce $66 million of funding through the Cooperative Research Centres Projects grants which are a wonderful way that the Albanese Labor Government is supporting Australian innovation. 

It is fantastic that this Canberra business and social enterprise have secured $2.2 million of that funding. This is an incredibly innovative business happening right here in Fyshwick. WV Technologies has managed to divert 450 million kilograms of e‑waste from landfill, generate energy equivalent to powering 450,000 Australian homes and created 66 Indigenous jobs. 

So it's wonderful to see this Canberra achievement rewarded this morning, and I've really appreciated the opportunity to meet with the team and hear about what they do here. 

It's my great pleasure now to hand over to Minister Ayres. 

SENATOR TIM AYRES, MINISTER FOR INDUSTRY AND INNOVATION AND MINISTER FOR SCIENCE: Thanks Alicia. Well, thank you very much. I'm delighted to be in Fyshwick. It's really good to be here to announce something that's a real practical application. 

This is a round of the CRC-P program. That is $66 million, that's driving the product of Australian research and development into practical applications that support firms to make capital investments and to employ people using innovative new Australian research and development. 

In this case, out of that $66 million program, $2.2 million here for WV Tech on this site. And the work that they do is absolutely extraordinary. 

It is a growth industry in Australia, taking the products, the computers, the motherboards, all of the work that comes out of big corporates, government departments, Department of Defence, Department of Finance. Making sure that in the recycling process, whether they are destroying that product or whether they are on-selling that product, that they are completely free of private or sensitive data. 

That requires a chain of assurance from when the product comes from the customer to when it goes back out to industry so that the customer, the Australian Government and the end user know that that data has been destroyed effectively. This is all a fundamental part of their business model, but it's also vital for Australia's reputation as a secure place for digital technology investment, or data centre investment. That firms who come here know that Australia has a credible effective approach, not just at the firm level, but across the economy. 

And it's so good to see this enterprise employ 66 mostly young – not all young – but mostly young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander boys and girls, and men and women in this enterprise here in Canberra. Fyshwick and in Hume. 

Expanding from Brisbane through to Melbourne and Sydney as the requirement of our digital infrastructure as our large firms grows for recycling. Enormous opportunities for this firm. And this new technology is using AI to manage that assurance process more efficiently, so there's less wasteful activity, less duplication. 

It's CSIRO-backed artificial intelligence being deployed in Australian industry to create real blue collar and technical jobs for ordinary Australians. I'm absolutely delighted to be part of this announcement, it's good to be back in Fyshwick again, and I look forward to coming here to watch the progress of this amazing work. Thank you. 

JAMIE MILLER, CO-FOUNDER WV TECHNOLOGIES: Yeah, I'd just like to thank the Ministers and the Government for supporting our business. As a social enterprise and a business enterprise that I co‑founded with Kurt Gruber 10 years ago now. We looked at this industry, the IT asset disposal, e‑waste recycling industry as a way to also achieve social outcomes, and so we've combined business with social outcomes in helping Indigenous youth through employment programs which [David] will talk about. 

It's through this business that we sort of realised the inefficiencies that are associated with the industry itself. It's fraught with data risk, IT asset disposals. It's also very inefficient in the sense of the different steps undertaken to achieve the decommissioning process. 

And so being in the industry and looking at all the things that we were doing, and we are doing to ensure data security and improve efficiency, we also recognised different ways in which we could optimise and innovate in the industry such that it brings greater data security to our customers and greater efficiency. 

And so the CRC-P grant really enables us to achieve that innovation through collaboration and research, but in a way that we can then commercialise the technology internationally. 

It's really going to achieve such great outcomes for Australian economy, in terms of its sovereign capabilities, in data security, as well as digital workflows that enable a much more efficient way to dispose of IT assets, and then allows us to also export that overseas. That capability overseas. 

We'd really like to thank the Department, the Government, because this is really I guess part of the innovation and the way to get greater productivity and innovation throughout the Australian economy. And then for us as a business, it's exceptional the support that that gives us and allows us to grow and use this as a platform to grow internationally while at the same time grow our workflows for the Indigenous cohort and youth that we work with. 

So with that I'll introduce Dave Witham from WorldView Foundation, General Manager. 

DAVID WITHAM: Thank you. I'm a proud Gunditjmara man from South West Victoria who is blessed to live and work on Ngunnawal land in the ACT, and as its current General Manager of WorldView Foundation. We're changing lives for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men. 

I should firstly thank Minister Ayres and [Ms] Payne for your attendance and also for your support of the WV Group, which WorldView Foundation is part of. We're the charitable arm of WV Group. Our primary role is to provide employment pathways for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men which commences with our six‑month intensive program over at our warehouse in Hume doing resource recovery. Followed by our graduates, and I've got a couple of young blokes we drove down together this morning. After six months they'll be placed in full‑time employment and then supported for another six months with our mentors, who are really the key to everything we're doing. 

So in essence, what are we doing? We're Closing the Gap in action. Outcomes 7 and 8, economic participation, increasing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment. Outcomes 10 and 11, reducing youth detention, reducing adult incarceration. These are where our clients come from and this is where, as per our motto, we're changing lives and achieving potential. 

And we're very fortunate to have the support of two directors who commenced the business back in 2018 who have kept the commitment to keep going in the ACT. We've probably graduated over 200 people throughout the program and found them meaningful employment, and, you know, changed the direction of their lives. 

We're currently – we've got a set up in Brisbane that we started last March that we're currently building. Our next stop will be in Melbourne and then after that we hope to be doing the same business in Sydney. 

So, look, it's a very exciting time for us. These types of grants do nothing but help Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experiencing disadvantage, and we're very thankful for that. Thank you. 

AYRES: Are there any questions from the camera team that you'd like to pass on? 

JOURNALIST: Do you have a message for David Littleproud? 

AYRES: Well, I saw David Littleproud's announcement yesterday. Of course I wish David and his family the very best, and really, you know, politics is hard, right. It's hard on the individuals who are involved, particularly in political leadership positions. It's hard on families. I saw David's press conference yesterday. And you can see all of us come into politics 'cause we're passionate about doing better for Australia. I sharply disagree with David on a whole lot of political issues – particularly about the future for Regional Australia – but I wish him and his family the very best. 

On another note, while I'm on my feet. I did see that Andrew Hastie, the new Coalition spokesperson on industry had – yet another – I mean he only has one speed, this guy. Lazy thinking about the future of modern industry in Australia. 

He's called for artificial intelligence data centres to be powered by coal and nuclear. You could not design in a laboratory a dumber proposition for industry, a dumber proposition for households and a dumber proposition for Australia's economic development. 

Coal and nuclear take at best 15 to 20 years to build. Data centres need to be built tomorrow. It's lazy thinking, it's because he never does the work, and what he should be doing is actually taking the time to talk to Australian industry. This is, it's the product of a lazy, rhetorical approach to the challenges for industry and the digital economy, rather than doing the hard work and engaging with communities and business. 

JOURNALIST: Obviously with businesses like this, and they're doing a really good job for the community, is there going to be any sort of issue with the raising costs of oil and transporting, cutting into any sort of margins making it a little bit harder on these sort of community programs? 

AYRES: Well, wherever there are rising costs it has an impact on business. Not as sharply, I would imagine for this business, but broadly for Australian business, of course, they are sensitive to movements in the price of fuel. 

Australia has the strongest fuel reserves today, stronger than it has for 15 years. We have more than 30 days on hold in Australia for diesel and petrol. Those figures have not changed over the course of the conflict in the Middle East. Since it began, to today. But obviously we are not complacent about that. 

We are focused, and led by our Minister for Energy, Chris Bowen, focused on a daily basis on making sure that we're evaluating what that means. At a supply level in the Australian economy, but also for individual businesses and individual regions. 

Cool. Thanks. Well done everybody. Thank you.