Podcast

Aaron Violi: From Fintech Startup to Canberra Politician

September 10, 2026 · Hosted by Dexter Cousins

Aaron Violi is the Federal Member for Casey and Shadow Minister for Science, Technology, Innovation, the Digital Economy and Cybersecurity. Before Parliament he spent fifteen years in the private sector — Yarra Valley Snack Foods, then Mars Australia, then the Canadian tech startup Ritual, where he took stock options and ran partnerships across Asia Pacific.

He is, in other words, a politician who has been on the other side of the employee share scheme paperwork. That is what makes this conversation different from the usual policy interview.

A politician who took the options.

Most conversations about employee equity in Australia are conducted by people who have only ever read about it. Aaron left a secure job at Mars to join a startup, and took stock options as part of the deal. He is explicit that it was a calculated bet: diversify his experience, and if the company became "the next Canva, Atlassian, Afterpay, Uber," set his family up financially.

That lived experience is why his account of the 2026 budget changes is specific rather than abstract. He describes young people rescinding accepted offers because the tax treatment moved. He describes founders caught between employees whose options have been diluted and investors who refuse to dilute further — and who, nine times out of ten, give up their own equity to keep both sides whole.

The bridge, and the drawbridge.

Aaron frames his two portfolios as a sequence: science, technology and innovation creates the products; the digital economy scales them. His job, as he saw it, was building the bridge between the two. His verdict on the budget is blunt — the government "blew up the bridge and put the drawbridge up."

The mechanism he describes is worth sitting with, because it is about where capital goes rather than how much of it there is. If you hold a hundred thousand dollars today, the changed settings make a startup a worse bet than Woolworths, Coles or BHP — because the startup return arrives as capital gain and the blue chip return arrives as dividend income. Innovation gets punished, he argues, at precisely the moment productivity is going backwards.

The talent question underneath the tax question.

For anyone hiring in fintech, the sharpest part of this episode is the mobility argument. Aaron’s fear is not only that founders leave, but that the ones who already left and succeeded no longer come home. He calls it the boomerang effect — the operator who sold a company in the US, wants to relocate back, and finds the tax settings prohibitive.

He sets that against what other jurisdictions are offering: a medtech company weighing Melbourne against a US city that put roughly twenty-five million dollars of tax breaks on the table over ten to fifteen years. He is careful to say he is not advocating that. He is pointing at the gap.

Reskilling, micro-credentials, and the limits of legislation.

On AI and jobs, Aaron quotes a big four bank CEO telling staff that AI will not replace their job — the risk is being replaced by someone who uses AI well. His policy instinct is to watch before intervening: universities and large employers are already building micro-credentials, and if that happens naturally, government should stay out of it.

He is also realistic about the pace problem. Governments will never legislate faster than the technology moves, and he offers his own five-week winter break as the measure: four or five significant developments in AI and cybersecurity in the time Parliament was not sitting. Build frameworks, step in as a last resort.

What he actually wants from the industry.

Asked what founders should do rather than complain about, his answer is slightly contrarian: keep complaining, but do it now, while the consultation window is open, and do it with stories about real impact rather than politics. Then bring him ideas that do not cost hundreds of millions, because the best people to solve these problems are the ones living through them.

Chapters.

0:00 — Introduction
1:02 — Aaron Violi background and portfolio
2:19 — What the digital economy means
4:39 — Lessons from Singapore
9:19 — Budget impact on startups
14:33 — Challenges facing startups
24:34 — The role of government
28:46 — Taxation and innovation
30:43 — Attracting talent back
36:48 — Vision for an innovative Australia
43:49 — Connecting with Aaron

Links from this episode.

Full transcript.

Lightly edited for readability — filler words and repetitions removed, wording otherwise unchanged.

Dexter Cousins
Hello and welcome to another episode of Fintech Chatter, the show where I connect with fintech leaders to talk about their secrets to success. I’m Dexter Cousins, your host and the founder of Tier One People, the executive search firm that for the past decade has been helping some of the world’s most renowned fintech companies bring in the executive leadership team to scale.

Today’s guest is someone a bit different. I’ve gone and brought a politician onto the show. But this is a politician with a difference. It’s actually somebody who’s worked in the trenches in fintech. Aaron Violi, welcome to your Fintech Chatter debut.

Aaron Violi
Hey Dexter, great to be on.

Dexter Cousins
Now I’ve given you a very vague intro there. So I thought that you could tell us a bit more about your background rather than me blab on for three minutes before letting you speak.

Aaron Violi
Perfect. Well, I’ll touch on the political side first, get that covered. Elected four years ago in 2022, representing the seat of Casey down in Victoria, including the beautiful Yarra Valley and Dandenong Ranges, but also lucky enough in February this year to be appointed by Angus Taylor as the Shadow Minister for Science, Technology, Innovation, the Digital Economy and Cybersecurity.

That’s the political. More importantly, the background. So about fifteen years in the private sector, including working here in the Yarra Valley at a small food manufacturer called Yarra Valley Snack Foods, then went to Mars Australia and led the sales team in Victoria and Tasmania for a couple of years as we merged with Wrigley Confectionery, and then went to a tech startup called Ritual, a Canadian based company, looking after partnerships and managing some of Asia Pacific, including our Hong Kong team there for a little while, before being elected, as I said, in 2022. So a lot of time in the private sector and in the tech sector as well, which I’m really passionate about.

Dexter Cousins
So your portfolio, digital economy. Can you expand on that for me?

Aaron Violi
The way I look at the digital economy is twofold. You’ve got your existing areas in terms of tech and fintechs, within the digital economy as a standalone industry, growing bigger with artificial intelligence. So that’s one part of what I think about. But I also think about essentially the whole economy being the digital economy, because we’ve seen every business start to digitise.

I use the example relevant to my community of farmers being able to use drones and AI and technology to be more efficient with their crops, and how they invoice and how they monitor their crops. And tradies as an example are using technology again to invoice, to get their quotes, get payments, do the boring paperwork. No tradie got on the tools and started a business because they wanted to do paperwork. So essentially every business is engaged with the digital economy.

And I think about how do we allow fintechs and the standalone digital economy and new companies to grow and prosper. But then how do those new companies solve problems in other parts of the economy? Finding that balance of a digital product helping another business is when everyone’s succeeding, and that’s what we need to try and do.

Dexter Cousins
Awesome. Some of the things that you touched on there — I was in Singapore in 2019 when the Fintech Festival was on. World’s biggest fintech event. How you’ve described your portfolio is pretty much exactly how Singapore was positioning themselves at the Singapore Fintech Festival. And I walked away from that thinking, wow, this is the benchmark, this is the template of what Australia should be doing. Where’s your inspiration come from for your portfolio? And how does it tie into Australia, but then more broadly places like Singapore or places like the Middle East?

Aaron Violi
I do look and compare to what other countries are doing, in terms of you can learn a lot of lessons, but I also recognise that every country is unique. Singapore — my dad and his partner lived there for seven, eight, maybe ten years when I was a teenager. So I spent a bit of time in Singapore, and because of the country, the size or the lack of size, they’ve really created an amazing financial and now technological hub. But they’ve got unique attributes, good and bad, relative to Australia.

So you can learn a lot from others, but a lot of my inspiration actually comes from my lived experience of moving from a multinational to a tech startup. We worked at a WeWork here in Melbourne, we had an office in Sydney, and you know what it’s like, the collaboration and hearing about other products. What really inspires me a lot is we succeeded, until COVID came, in spite of the government, if I’m really honest.

I remember talking to the CFO in Toronto when I was over there, and he talked about employee share schemes and how hard it was to set up in Australia and to make sure we had stock options. And this phrase sticks with me a lot. He said, if Australia wasn’t the perfect market for us in terms of our product, we would have pulled the pin and we wouldn’t have launched in Australia. At that time we were employing twenty, twenty-five Australians, helping cafes and businesses with their ordering and payments and adding value to those businesses. Only because it was such a good fit were they able to do it.

I came into this role really passionate. There’s a lot we need to do, but in some ways it’s just get out of the way and make it easier for these great businesses and great products to flourish. We’ve got talented people. Up until the last couple of months, we’ve had a lot of people and a lot of businesses wanting to invest in Australia because of our democracy, our consistency of laws, et cetera. So we’ve got a lot going for us. It’s a high income country, but governments have continued to make it harder and harder by laying regulation on and making changes. So that’s my inspiration — seeing it firsthand, seeing the opportunities, but also seeing the challenges we had to endure in the couple of years I was at that tech startup.

Dexter Cousins
I’ve got no political affiliations, and my view is always whoever’s got the best policies that strike that really fine balance between socialism and capitalism. I think the two have to coexist in a very fine balance. But I felt compelled after this recent budget to put in a submission, and I’ve never done anything like that before.

And the reason why is that I could see very clearly the immediate impacts. My pipeline lost eighty percent of its business because businesses were either about to raise money or about to launch in Australia and quickly pulled the plug. I’ve also seen talent now start to look at other jurisdictions. I wanted to get your take on the budget itself, what it means for the economy, and what the coalition, the opposition, is doing to try and get some common sense knocked into parliament.

Aaron Violi
Dexter, you’re not alone. I’ve been overwhelmed — not surprised — with people from the tech sector and startups and entrepreneurs who have generally tried to stay apolitical, but also are so busy running and trying to found their businesses that they haven’t engaged in the political process, reaching out and saying, no, look, we need to step in, whether it’s a submission, lobbying publicly. It’s really I think awoken a lot of the sector to there is a difference, and the impact that government decisions can make.

If I step back, I’ve spoken about the digital economy side of my portfolio. I was really lucky Angus Taylor created these three portfolio areas with my background and skill set in mind. So the other part to it, which links to the budget changes in particular, was science, technology and innovation. The way I look at those two areas interacting is science, technology and innovation is about how do we create new products that are going to solve problems in the economy, in our country, and solve those big problems. That’s through universities, but also through R&D. We can talk about the R&D tax incentives, but those changes have gone under the radar and are really going to impact people as well.

And then startups and businesses — how do we encourage new products and new ideas to start in Australia? Because you want to move them from science, technology and innovation into the digital economy, which is essentially being able to roll those products and ideas out at scale, and also to make sure they’re commercial. Because unless you can roll it out not just in Australia but globally in time, you’re not going to be competitive. And unless you can roll it out at a valuable competitive price, people aren’t going to take it up.

So I was really focusing on bridging that gap, and capital’s a big part of that. If I use the bridge analogy, I was thinking about how do we build the bridge to make it easier. And this government have actually blown up the bridge and put the drawbridge up and made it even harder. What concerns me is they’ve completely misunderstood the industry.

I’ll use again my personal story, and I’ve been inundated with people talking to me about this. When I left Mars Australia, I went to Ritual and I took stock options. That was a twofold decision. I’d spent a decade plus in grocery and I wanted to diversify my skill set and my experience, and I really believed in the tech world and I wanted to work at a startup. I wanted to get into the ecosystem. But there was also the hope that if we could be the next Canva, Atlassian, Afterpay, Uber, I could set myself and my family up financially. So we made that calculation.

The current reality is there’s young people now rescinding offers that they’ve accepted, saying, no, the tax changes have changed, unless you give me more options, I’m out. We’ve got founders I’m talking to that are caught in a horrible situation where people have been with them for three or four years and they’re going, well, my options are now diluted, so I need more. And the investors are going, well, hang on, we’re not diluting our equity in this. So what happens? The founder has two choices. They have disengaged, frustrated employees through no fault of their own, or — nine times out of ten — they do what they have to do. They give up more of their equity to keep their employees engaged and happy and their investors happy, and that dilutes the potential payoff for them.

This is happening in real time, and that’s before you even get to investors. Because the raw facts are, if I had a hundred thousand dollars to invest today, these tax changes have made it harder and the payoff is less to invest in a startup where you’re basing your capital growth on your payout. It encourages you to put it into the stock market, into well established businesses like Woolworths, Coles, BHP, because you’re not looking to make your money off the capital gain, you’re looking to make it off dividends, which is then just income. So it is perversely punishing innovation at the exact time that productivity is negative.

Negative five percent productivity — and small business, tech startups, fintech, innovation is going to drive the productivity changes we need. Then you overlay artificial intelligence and needing to encourage businesses to invest in AI to drive productivity and drive better outcomes. These changes would have been disastrous at any time. But this is literally, in my mind, the worst time to do it. And then to do it in the way that they have, with no consultation, to essentially drop it on everyone and then say we’re going to reverse engineer how we’re going to do it and work out the detail afterwards.

Well, of course investors overseas are rightly going to go, we’ve got no certainty of what it’s going to look like, so we’re going to pause. And when businesses need capital and you’re trying to raise because your runway’s running out and people are pausing — again, you’ve either got to take less money and dilute more of your options, or your business is going to go bust. I haven’t heard those stories yet, but I’m sure they are out there.

And I’ll stop on this point, and you already know this: that’s before we talk about the talent fleeing overseas, or living in Australia and setting up in the US or Singapore. It feels like other countries are rolling out the red carpet to businesses and this government is actively putting more barriers in place. When you do that, despite all our benefits, don’t be surprised if capital flees and people flee. And the worst part is it’s not just those businesses that are going to struggle — it’s all the other businesses and community members that would benefit from these great products that are not going to get the opportunity to use them either.

Dexter Cousins
You talked about the AI bit. Being in the human capital space, something that I’ve been fearful of since probably about 2012 — I’ve recruited through what I would say was the first iteration of the digital revolution, which was everybody getting a computer on their desk and the internet and databases. In my experience that was like a seven year rollout of getting people up to speed with things like Microsoft Word, using email.

Look at AI, and we’ve had literally every two months it evolves and takes this almost quantum leap forwards. We’re not going to get a seven year period to help people reskill. There doesn’t seem to be any answers out there, Aaron. If I look at the Governor of the RBA, or anybody else in a position where they’re asked, the response is, well, we had the typist pool, we managed to repurpose them, or hey, it always just works out. I don’t think we’ve got time to just hope it might work out. There needs to be a really proactive approach to what are we going to do if all of a sudden everybody starts making ten percent, fifteen percent of their workforce redundant because they’re using technology now. What’s your view on how we’re going to reskill and retool the Aussie population so that we’re at the forefront of this revolution, not the victims of it?

Aaron Violi
We have to be at the forefront. We need to accept that it’s happening, the rollout globally, and you can’t be a Luddite. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t prepare. Dexter, you’ve touched on one of the most important points around training and reskilling, and I’m frustrated that it’s taken the government this long to start to bring AI to the national conversation. I was talking about how slow they were on leaning into this back in 2023 — first MP to use ChatGPT in a speech in February 2023, just to highlight how much the technology had advanced in a matter of six months from when I’d been elected to then.

Where I think the huge opportunity is when it comes to reskilling is around micro-credentials in particular. I spoke to one of the CEOs of a big four bank and he tells his employees quite openly: AI’s not going to replace your job, your risk is you get replaced by someone that knows how to use AI really well. That’s the opportunity in a nutshell. How do we make sure employees are trained and embracing the tools? Because that’s ultimately what they are — a tool to help you do your job better.

There will be changes, there will be disruption. Unfortunately, some people will lose jobs. That history is there — there always is, whether it’s a business going broke, restructuring. It’s an unfortunate part of the world, but people every day are losing their jobs. I always think about, in the sort of time we’re talking, someone in Australia has been given that horrible news that they’ve lost their job. That’s unfortunately our world.

But the internet and email is a great example. As new technologies come in, our jobs change, but also the expectation of our customers changes as well. Before email you didn’t have to get back to everyone within what feels like three hours these days. Before mobile phones, if you returned a call in two or three days, it was sort of acceptable. So expectation will increase. People will expect apps to be better. Things like prompt engineering for AI will become more prevalent.

So I do think a lot of the jobs in the white collar industries that are impacted have the dexterity and the skill set and the ability to move. For example, we’ve got a shortage of cybersecurity experts. So how do you move from being a software engineer to a cybersecurity expert? That’s where I think micro-credentials play a key part. Because if you’re 30, 35 and you’ve been working for a decade, you don’t need to go back and do a four year course on AI to be employable. But you might need a couple of courses, whether it’s through universities — and I know a lot of the larger organisations are running credentials as well.

Then the question becomes, is there a role for government to lean into that? Because the first question I always ask is that, because it sometimes can be our instinct to go, well, we should set up a marketplace or regulate. It’s like, well, we should actually observe. I know, for example, universities are already embedding AI and micro-credentials into some of their cyber and IT courses to make their graduates more employable. A lot of the bigger organisations are creating micro-credentials and retraining opportunities as well. So we’ve got to watch and see, and if that can happen naturally, that’s a great thing. And then if not, how do government step in?

Although fundamentally my belief is talent is hard to find. We’ve got an ageing population, there’s less workers, unemployment is consistently low at the moment. Companies won’t want to lose good employees that are adding value to their business. They will see artificial intelligence as an opportunity to allow their good employees to do even better. And it’ll become a competitive advantage. That’s where I feel instinctively we will end up, and so we’ve just got to watch.

I think the other challenge when it comes to legislating and regulating artificial intelligence and all technology — and I spoke about this in my first speech actually, and I’m not going to pretend I predicted the four year exponential growth of AI — to your point around the decision making cycle getting shorter and shorter: governments are never going to be able to legislate and regulate quicker than the advancement of AI. It’s literally not possible. We’ve had the five-week winter break where we’re out in our communities and getting out of the Canberra cold, and in that five weeks there’s been four or five significant developments in AI, cybersecurity and other spaces. So you’ve got to accept that, build the frameworks, and then step in if it’s not working, as a last resort in my view.

Dexter Cousins
One of the things that you’ve talked about there that really resonates with me, and you’ve got lived experience of this as well, is if I look at what AI now does for the workplace, it effectively means everybody, if they’re in a white collar role, has to start thinking like an entrepreneur, has to start thinking like they’re in a startup. How do we utilise these tools to get the outcome that we’re looking for?

One of the challenges that I’ve found recruiting for startups has been, particularly if you’re bringing people from a big corporate environment, there’s this big transition of all of a sudden — you were doing one thing with all of this support and most of your job’s taken up going to meaningless meetings — and all of a sudden you’re in this environment where it’s like you’ve got to get stuff done. And you’ve got all of these challenges like regulators. Particularly in fintech, you can’t move fast and break things. You have to work within the constraints of regulation.

My belief, in the experience that I’ve got of recruiting across Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, is I actually think Australian entrepreneurs, us Aussies in the startup community, are probably the best equipped out of any of those regions, because of our constrained resources, the challenges around regulation, the challenges around capital, the challenges around talent. We’ve got great people, but we’ve got less of them than the US as well.

It seems to me such a shame that we’ve had this thing about punching above our weight for so long that it feels like there’s just not the energy there for people to keep pushing on. I’ll give you an example. I’ve got some clients — if I look at founders who maybe started a business ten years ago that went on to be a unicorn, back then when I was talking to them they were saying, hey, we’re going to build this unicorn business and we’re going to be five thousand people, and I believed them. And they actually did.

Now I’ve got them saying, hey, we think we can build the same thing, if not better, but with about five hundred people or two hundred people. And I absolutely believe them as well. How do we switch this model? We’ve got monopolies and oligopolies in Australia that employ a lot of people, but maybe they’re not going to need to employ them. How do we encourage more people to become entrepreneurs, to go out and start something, to go out and fix problems? And what do you see as the role of government in enabling that to happen?

Aaron Violi
Well, I’ll be a little bit cheeky and say not take forty-seven percent of the company when they sell — which goes to that point I was making before about why this change is so bad. Because I agree in this sense that AI is now creating an amazing opportunity for people to start businesses. You can suddenly work at a big four bank or a big consulting firm and start a side hustle, and a lot of the technical side of it you can do yourself.

I remember speaking to someone recently who’s in their mid-50s and not very tech savvy by their own admission, and they were able to create a tracker — they’re in government relations, and one of the things they need to do is track the legislation and track all the public commentary from ministers and shadow ministers. They created this app that does that, that they can provide to clients, and they did it themselves with zero tech skill. That’s where I was going before, Dexter, about that becoming standard now. Clients will now expect the information straight away, or the risk is they can build it themselves. So your critical thinking and your value add will become more important.

There is a potential for entrepreneurs and startups to go to another level here in Australia. But the challenge is, again, why would you, in the current tax settings? Why would you leave a well paid corporate job to take that risk? This government in particular has lost the understanding that the reason we have separate tax arrangements for income and capital, particularly for startups, is that it’s a risk. There’s no guarantee. And for every unicorn, as you know, you would have had at least ten or twenty, if not more, clients that had the same dream that didn’t succeed. That’s why we price in risk.

Dexter Cousins
It’s a bit like going to the Melbourne Cup and every horse has got the same odds.

Aaron Violi
Yes. And every founder and every startup I talk to, they’re happy to pay tax. It’s not about that. It’s about recognising that you’re trying to attract talent and there is risk it might not succeed. As they say, if it goes bust they don’t get a tax credit from the government. So they’re taking all the upside and none of the downside. So you want to incentivise that more.

I think we can see this explosion, and the Australian story is that people will still have a go, which is great, but we can’t rely on that. So I think a lot about how do we get those tax settings right. Then how do we look at things like not picking winners in terms of government grants to companies or specific people. I believe there’s a role government can play around industries.

Let me use quantum as a great example. I’ve been very critical publicly of this government when it comes to quantum, because they invested a significant amount of taxpayer money in a company called PsiQuantum, which is a US based company, to bring them to Australia. A lot better strategy in my mind would have been to create a quantum test bed strategy — and there’s amazing Australian companies — give those regulation setups incentives to the whole industry. And then let the best product flourish. Governments shouldn’t be VCs. We shouldn’t be picking winners. This government does that a lot.

So how do you take away the disincentive that they’ve currently got, but just incentivise the great products to flourish? Because there’s no shortage of good ideas out there and governments aren’t the right people to pick them. We will see, between AI and quantum and other technologies, this huge growth in ideas. But talent, capital, everything’s mobile. As I said before, I spent time in Singapore — beautiful country. If you’re twenty-five, twenty-six, why wouldn’t you spend a few years in Singapore? Why wouldn’t you go to the US? And many go to the US anyway, if they’ve really got that bug.

But I fear that if you’ve had a successful launch and you’ve sold your company in the US and you want to relocate back to Australia, the tax settings make it so prohibitive now. We’re going to lose them coming back — the boomerang effect. That’s another big fear I’ve got with these changes.

Dexter Cousins
One of those founders that I talked about earlier was on my show earlier this year, on his fourth or fifth startup now. He said in that episode — this was February — Australia, we’re going to be Australian headquartered, we’re not doing US. Even though we’re AI, we’re not doing US. All the best talent’s here in Australia, been around the world.

Two months later, it’s like, what do I do? It’s impossible now. I want to be based in Australia and now it’s been made so difficult and prohibitive that I’ve got no chance of success. If this was a footy game, you’re starting twenty-five points behind before the whistle’s gone for kickoff.

Aaron Violi
Correct. And as a comparison to that thought pattern, speaking to someone in medtech, they literally had someone looking to decide between Melbourne and a US city. And the US city has offered them something like twenty-five million dollars in tax breaks over ten, fifteen years, so a long time. I’m not necessarily advocating for that, but that is the comparison you’ve got. Cities and countries and states overseas offering significant tax breaks to say, come and set up here, because they see the opportunity and benefit. And we’re like, no, we’re not going to give you breaks, but actually we’re going to tax you more and make it harder for you. And it reaches a tipping point.

That example of that founder also I think is not understood by this government. That when people raise and sell and they make a lot of money, I would say ninety-nine percent — probably a hundred percent under, call it, under fifty. If you get a bit older you might want to — not saying over fifty is old, but you get to a point in life where you’re happy to semi-retire. But most put enough away for their families and for their comfortable life and reinvest into new startups, because they’re chasing the next thing. Not for the money, but two reasons: they love what they do, but they also feel a sense of obligation to give back, because they wouldn’t have created their company without someone else investing in them. This is that ecosystem community impact of startups that I think this government just fail to understand.

Dexter Cousins
One of the things that I get frustrated about with the fintech industry is we spend a lot of time complaining about government, and really we need to be focusing on solutions. What would you encourage founders and participants, myself included, in the industry to be doing now so that potentially we can start to get some solutions and start to work through this?

Aaron Violi
I think you’re right, it’s very easy to get frustrated and there’s a lot to get frustrated about. I know this is a bit counterintuitive to what you just said, Dexter, but complaining and making noise while the consultation period is on is really important, because there is a small window. I don’t think they’re looking to make too many changes — they’re in the trenches on this one. But the more pressure we can put on as a coalition with the support — and to be clear, I’m not saying support politically, I mean support in terms of stories and how people are impacted. Having those conversations in the short term, I think, is really important.

And then, speaking for myself, I really appreciate four years into Parliament that the world I left from a business perspective has changed significantly. So if startups or people in the industry have got ideas and run into frustrations where they go, well, if they just changed A, B and C, it would make my life easier — sharing that with myself as the shadow minister is really beneficial. Because the best people to solve the problems are those that are living through it every day. Please come with ideas that generally don’t cost hundreds of millions of dollars, given the budget situation.

But it is amazing, I’ve had a lot of conversations where people have said, well, have you just thought about X, Y and Z? And those ideas start to feed into our policy making, so we can do one of two things: raise it with the government and say, could you consider this, or build out our policy platform towards the next election. Because fundamentally I want to make it as easy as possible for the digital economy to flourish, while making sure Australians are safe and they’re sharing in the benefits of increased productivity and increased economic growth, and — to be really blunt — aren’t being exploited in any way. If we can strike that balance, that’s what we’re looking to do from a policy perspective. So engaging with myself, your local MP, the government, when you’ve got ideas in a constructive way. I certainly read every email and engage with all the ideas, understanding that industry knows a lot better than I do these days what’s happening, and how governments are making it harder and could make it easier for them.

Dexter Cousins
I want to end on a positive. So ten years ago when I started this business, we had a prime minister who talked about Australia as the innovation nation. What’s your rallying call for Australia? What’s your vision? And what do you think is achievable for us as a nation if we get this right?

Aaron Violi
It’s an important question, and I believe we can be an innovation nation, but we need to get the message right — that the rising tide lifts all boats. It helps everyone. I think sometimes the risk is that people hear digital economy or innovation and they think they’re going to lose their job.

So let me give the example of what’s the innovation agenda and how does it work to the ultimate. When I’ve got tradies in Casey in five or six years’ time — and someone will write me an email telling me they’re already doing this — but I envisage a world where that tradie can go to the job, ask four or five questions, put them into an iPad with AI and other technology that will spit out a quote. They review the quote in ten seconds. It has a payment schedule, et cetera. The client signs it, puts all the details in, they sign off. And they know that based on technology their quote’s going to be ninety-nine percent accurate, bar a pandemic or something. Agreed payment terms, the payments automatically come in, they don’t have to chase them. The client can look at all the plans on their iPad as well at home, and the engagement’s digital, but it’s 3D designs, you know exactly what you’re signing off on.

And then that tradie can employ more apprentices, can get to their kids’ school concert, and can go on holidays and actually relax, because they’re spending less time on paperwork, more time on the tools, building houses and making them cheaper for people as well. And then you’ve got more houses well built at a low price with more people living in them. That’s one example. But making the innovation agenda work for every Australian is what we need to do.

Dexter Cousins
Sounds like you’re talking about productivity there, Aaron.

Aaron Violi
I am, but in a way where — let’s be honest, people hear productivity and their eyes can glaze over. I do talk about productivity a lot, but in the sense that it’s not just about making profit for the sake of it. It is about allowing people to do what they love, get home to be with their loved ones. And if they make more money they’ll invest it in our country, whether it’s a new jet ski for a tradie, or investing in a new apprentice and new tools to be even better at what they do. That’s what we’re missing. We’re missing productivity growth in this country, and the digital economy and an innovation agenda can unlock that — not just for those in the industry, but for all Australians. That’s what I’m working on to achieve.

Dexter Cousins
I’ve got lived experience of that process, which is why I feel so passionate about it. Having grown up in the north east of England, that was a heavy industrial area that a hundred years previously was like the Silicon Valley of the industrial age, and then all of a sudden has twenty-five percent unemployment and nobody can get a job, and all of the men of the families have to go offshore or overseas to go and find work.

And you see then when a government comes in that incentivises entrepreneurship, incentivises investment, the impacts that that has on quality of life, on job creation. You go from twenty-five percent unemployment to five percent unemployment. You go to the fathers being around. You also see the socio-economic impacts, the bad stuff as well — the families that never worked, kids that end up in jail. So what you’ve talked about is ultimately what every politician’s selling, which is quality of life. And unfortunately the levers that we’re pulling is, every three years, let’s give a tax cut so we get votes. Not how are we actually going to create a better quality of life?

Aaron Violi
And that’s where we sit with AI, on the precipice of that opportunity if we get it right. But what do we want to avoid, Dexter, to your point? I agree a hundred percent. We don’t want to see a world of twenty-five, thirty percent unemployment in communities or in towns. We’ve seen that happen before. Where I think the potential could be different is a lot of that disruption in heavy manufacturing was very much location specific. Whereas with technology you can still live where you’re living and retrain.

Dexter Cousins
I think back to those times a lot. The only options that people had was literally to go to another city, another country to find work. Now you could be sitting there and — the example you gave before, right, they had a prototype up and running in a weekend, no tech skills. There’s examples of people that have created a business within the space of a week and it’s generating a million dollars ARR.

The optimist in me is like, this is what we’ve got to be looking towards. But there’s also the balance of, hey, if we don’t get this right, I know how bad it can get.

Aaron Violi
Correct. And what’s lost in the conversation sometimes is it’s never just the direct jobs — and your upbringing’s an example. You get to twenty-five percent unemployment, it’s not just that twenty-five percent from heavy manufacturing. Make the numbers up, maybe ten percent. But they’re not going to the pub on a Friday night, they’re not buying fish and chips, they’re not getting a new car. So then you start that sort of doom loop.

Dexter Cousins
Then you’ve got increased crime, increased sickness, all of these other things where it very quickly creates a dystopia versus a utopia.

Aaron Violi
And the dignity of work is so important, and the purpose that it brings to people. So I think there’s a huge opportunity that technology will give greater purpose and greater dignity, because you can be a bit more flexible in what you want to do and how you want to do it. Again, if we get it right. But this idea that if we get to those numbers, it’s not just about giving people money. Money’s important — we’ve got to have a roof over our head and, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, feed ourselves and pay our bills. But we want everyone to have a greater sense of purpose so they wake up enjoying what they’re doing. And again, if we get it right, technology can unlock and deliver that. But there is huge risk. Technology needs to work for our country, not embracing technology for the sake of winning a technological race. We’ve got to win the benefits, not just the race.

Dexter Cousins
Well, Aaron, it’s been absolutely awesome to talk to you. It’s felt more like a mate at the pub than talking to a politician. If people want to find out more, or they’ve got questions, or they’ve got some ideas or stories that they want to share with you, what’s the best way for them to reach out to you?

Aaron Violi
LinkedIn is always a pretty good one. So just put the name into LinkedIn and feel free to follow and connect. I try and reply to everyone — it can take a little while, but I’m genuinely interested in people’s ideas and what’s happening and how they think we can get it better.

Dexter Cousins
Brilliant. Well, thank you very much for your time today, Aaron. It was great to chat.

Aaron Violi
No problems, thanks Dexter, appreciate it.

Dexter Cousins
As always, people, you can connect with me on LinkedIn and X. If you’re new to the show, make sure you follow us wherever you’re listening. Or if you’re watching on YouTube, subscribe and give us a thumbs up. It really does help us in sharing the good word from people like Aaron. Until the next episode, keep well.

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