Taxes just the start of reform

INTRODUCING tax incentives that encourage small-to-medium enterprises to better engage in the digital economy was pushed by Telstra boss Andy Penn during a visit to Geelong.

Mr Penn also called on all levels of government to do more to digitise their services.

From a national policy perspective, digital enablement of SME was an area that “needs a lot of help”, he said.

“Things like reform around tax, where you can give tax breaks for businesses that migrate their business to the cloud,” Mr Penn said.

Governments, particularly local government, needed to reform anything that got in the way of a paperless, virtual or cashless economy, he said.

“There are still lots of things that you need to do — planning applications, submissions, licences — that you need to do physically,” he said. “All that can be reformed.”

Mr Penn said cutting through the bureaucracy had long been a key issue for small business.

“I think we need a national strategy around the digital economy which inculcates digital infrastructure … by that I mean telecommunications in the cloud,” he said.

Mr Penn said the rollout of the NBN was just part of the system.

“What is most important is how do we enable the whole of the telecommunications sector to innovate, to invest in things like 5G, to accelerate the upgrade of the NBN, rather than just finish the rollout and make it financially viable?” he said. “The dividend they get for the digital economy will outweigh any dividend they ever get from the NBN by multiples of times.”

He said with the 5G network allowing the development of the Internet of Things, it was important to invest in mobile technology as opposed to fixed technology.

“5G is the first telecommunication technology that has been designed specifically to connect things that are not mobile phones,” he said.

“With 4G, regardless of capacity, we would typically connect 10,000 devices to a single cell coverage area. With 5G, we can connect a million.”