Equitable industry-based funding in government budgets has always been a contentious issue. Close to the top of the industry winners are always mining, agriculture, and manufacturing. And much of the budget funding that goes to support these industries is significant investments in ports, rail and harbour-facilities to enable the import and export of primary and secondary industry ouputs. These facilities are infrastructure beacons that can be irrevocably linked to their industry. They provide an unmistakeable sense of importance, significance and tactile and tangible measurements: job creation, physical exports, investment attraction, and international gateways.

Yet if we take a look at Australian GDP, estimated in 2007 to be approximately $773 billion, then the industries that receive budgetary favouritism are the ones that contribute a mere ~10% (mining and agriculture combined), and ~12% (manufacturing) of the national total. Earlier this year Longhaus have calculated the annual contribution of the Australian ICT industry to reach ~$170 billion (including SME contribution) or around 20% of GDP. Based on these numbers, in Queensland alone, ICT's contribution exceeds the national contribution of the mining industry. So where are the ports, rail, and harbour infrastructure investment equivalents for ICT to rival those of the other industries?

The Access Economics report released earlier this year entitled The economic benefits of intelligent technologies outlined the significant economic benefit (through GDP contribution) that could be delivered by the adoption of smart technologies across five core areas of electricity, health, irrigation, transport and broadband communications. The one thing required to achieve the stated contributions for all the initiatives is code. Forgetting for a minute that much of IT is "general purpose" and contributes to the other 58% of GDP (retail, financial services, tourism and education), "specialist" IT requires dedicated facilities and for the 1/5th of GDP contributor that is specialist ICT, a campus dedicated to application development would represent an excellent policy initiative. 

First and foremost, software code is the global natural resource of the future, a point which Longhaus have pointed out several times in our research over the past few years. This is supported by the strategic initiatives of all the major platform companies. But it is more than just code. The valuable by-product of the resource is the ever increasing industry specific meta-data that relates to the code. For example data packs on ERP and CRM, or the specialist GRID requirements for smart metering, irrigation, or transport systems. If further support is needed then we should look no further than the second and third world economies rising on the back of software code. They are known as the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and represent the heartlands of labour arbitrage offshore ICT nations on the planet.

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) also represent two of the  fastest emerging business models yet with a limited ability to exploit such technological developments at the core level it begs the question as to where is Australia's next PaaS-based vendor. Is it Technology One, should it be Mincom, or will they and other Australian software "icons" simply fall behind. 

The establishment of a world-class application development campus could be a honey pot for foreign talent already being honed overseas and drive skilled labour migration, and regional development that would not just contribute to the wider economic development of the nation but is necessary to the achievable completion of grand schemes such as the NBN - the technology equivalent of the 1950's Snowy Mountain Scheme; one of the last great migrant labour influxes experienced in Australia.

A policy initiative that supported a specialist campus would bring a built environment and public works mentality to ICT industry investment and provide a heartland for ongoing lobbying. Such a facility could become the focus of potential public and private cloud hubs for the country and feed other industries including animation, design, gaming, all reliant on application and platform development.  Australia has already been overlooked by all the major vendors for the establishment of a regional cloud computing hub, and lost the significant development and learning opportunities this would have represented.

The development of policy to support software code as a natural resource is indeed a nation building initiative. With or without it, our national code-capability will significantly impact Australia's future position in the global economy.