Where are the jobs?

THERE was much fanfare when Premier Daniel Andrews announced global tech giant LiveTiles was planning to set up its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Geelong.

It was November 2017, and the Premier and a host of local Labor MPs lined up to celebrate the coup — as well as the 500 jobs we were told would come with it.

The timing was perfect, coinciding with Geelong’s growing reputation as an innovation hub and mere weeks before Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was due to speak at Geelong’s Pivot Summit. Geelong was riding its tech wave of success, and attracting a global innovator was considered the cherry on top.

Five months later, and the excitement hadn’t dissipated. When we checked back in with LiveTiles global vice president of marketing Nick Rameka, he spoke of an office fit-out at North Geelong’s Federal Mills precinct that would be up and running by May and that recruiting for the Geelong operation had already begun.

In August LiveTiles was back, hosting the lavish LiveTilesX event — a gathering of tech innovators with a close to $200 ticket entry and featuring an address by then Small Business Minister Philip Dalidakis, who lauded the benefits of attracting innovation leaders to Geelong. While the office still hadn’t been completed, founder Karl Redenbach said the move would be imminent and expected the Federal Mills base to be populated by the end of the year.

Fast forward to February 2019 — 15 months after the Premier’s big announcement and promise of hundreds of jobs — and the LiveTiles’ AsiaPacific headquarters lies empty. Despite the State Government’s $1.5 million investment, the hundreds of jobs have yet to appear and the world-leading innovation is yet to have eventuated out of Geelong.

LiveTiles maintains that the plans are unchanged and that the delay is all due to a wait on a Federal Government tax incentive application.

But with so much public money involved, is that really good enough?