Oh no, you're thinking, yet another cookie pop-up. Well, sorry, it's the law. We measure how many people read us, and ensure you see relevant ads, by storing cookies on your device. If you're cool with that, hit “Accept all Cookies”. For more info and to customize your settings, hit “Customize Settings”.

Review and manage your consent

Here's an overview of our use of cookies, similar technologies and how to manage them. You can also change your choices at any time, by hitting the “Your Consent Options” link on the site's footer.

Manage Cookie Preferences
  • These cookies are strictly necessary so that you can navigate the site as normal and use all features. Without these cookies we cannot provide you with the service that you expect.

  • These cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you. They perform functions like preventing the same ad from continuously reappearing, ensuring that ads are properly displayed for advertisers, and in some cases selecting advertisements that are based on your interests.

  • These cookies collect information in aggregate form to help us understand how our websites are being used. They allow us to count visits and traffic sources so that we can measure and improve the performance of our sites. If people say no to these cookies, we do not know how many people have visited and we cannot monitor performance.

See also our Cookie policy and Privacy policy.

This article is more than 1 year old

Boffins deflate digital economy bubble with hard economic data

Google says digital economy worth AU$79bn to Australia, hard science scores $145bn

Australians are getting their regular consultant-driven exhortation to ride the “digital economy” horse to wealth and prosperity, even though it turns out that for every digitally disruptive dollar that flows from the fingers of keyboard warriors, two dollars escapes the science lab into the economy.

We're working with a few sources here, starting with Google, whose semi-regular report by Deloitte – the last was in 2011 – has been dipped in chocolate and wrapped in gold.

“The digitally-enabled economy contributed AU$79 billion to GDP in 2013-2014” writes Google Australia MD Maile Carnegie, following up with the gushing claim that the sector “has grown by a whopping 50 per cent since 2011”.

That latter claim needs to be filed somewhere “handle with caution” and “don't believe the hype”, since Deloitte itself makes this following unequivocal statement in the report:

“In this report we expand and update our analysis of the internet in the 2011 report to the digital economy as a whole in 2015” (emphasis added).

In other words, Deloitte has revised the report's inclusions and its methodologies since 2011, and – importantly – hasn't told readers how much impact that has on the report outcomes.

And here's a blow to the electronic-ego: science has you beat and beat badly.

While the imitation Ubers and AirBNB wannabees want the kid gloves of government subsidy and special tax treatment handed out with the old-boy ties, science turns out to be worth between double and triple the best the bit-barn-brotherhood has to offer.

If you take the conservative estimate put out by the Office of the Chief Scientist and the Australian Academy of Science in this report, hard science in this country comes close to the digital economy in export activity alone.

The Importance of Advanced Physical and Mathematical Sciences to the Australian Economy, prepared by the Centre for International Economics, puts the export value of science at $AU74 billion annually and "estimates that the direct contribution of the advanced physical and mathematical sciences is equal to 11% of the Australian economy (that is, about $145 billion per year).

That report, which borrows its methodologies from those used in the US and Europe (to be fair, Deloitte probably uses its methodologies more than once as well), says the direct contribution of science to the economy is $AU149 billion and its employment contribution (direct and indirect) is close to 800,000 jobs.

Since the science report includes extensive citations from Deloitte, Vulture South presumes the bean counters aren't about to tell us it uses a bad methodology … ®

 

Similar topics

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like