10th McIlwraith Lecture with Steve Baxter

What to do? Australia has a problem - we no longer make things, we specialise in digging stuff up and exporting it. These days the big money is in IP, but while we have the 12th largest economy in the world we don't figure in world rankings when it comes to filing patents.

Steve Baxter, a successful high tech entrepreneur who these days dedicates himself to nurturing high tech startups, should have the answers.

Australia's standard of living is based on high prices for our minerals. Without them the federal budget collapses and debt flies out of control.

It's not a complete wasteland. In the high tech sector we have multi-billion dollar companies like Atlassian, and more recently Canva, but if we want to continue to enjoy high living standards, we need many more.

The McIlwraith Lecture celebrates innovation and entrepreneurship. Steve Baxter made his first fortune with SE Net, an Internet Service Provider he set up in his spare room.

He rose to public fame as one of the panellists on the Shark Tank and was later appointed Queensland's Chief Entrepreneur by the state government.

Today, one of his businesses is River City Labs, which is an incubator designed to produce more innovators and entrepreneurs like himself, while another is TEN13 a tech venture capitalist vehicle.

An ex-serviceman, Steve is also currently Founder and Lead Investor of Beaten Zone Venture Partners which focuses on early-stage tech ventures in defence.

This year’s lecture is unmissable given all the challenges facing Australia, and the inability of our political class to focus on them.

Sir Thomas McIlwraith was premier of Queensland from 1879 to 1883, then again in 1988 and 1893. His vision for Queensland led to the opening-up of the state. He was one of the fathers of federation, but died of illness in London in July 1900, less than 6 months before it occurred.

Also check out other Business events in Herston, Workshops in Herston.