Fostering the Sharing Economy in Australia

Andrew Leigh, the ALP Federal Shadow Minister for Competition, has invited comment on "Sharing the future: Getting policy right in the Age of the App" (Federal Opposition Discussion Paper, 24 March 2015). This gives an overview of the "Sharing Economy", where an on-line service can be used to allow individuals to make use of each others goods and services (for free, in return for the opportunity to borrow others for for a fee). Borrowing something from a neighbor, or renting out a room for a night, is hardly a new idea, but web based services make it possible on a global scale. The ALP paper covers the issues of: Employment and workers’ rights, Public safety and consumer protections, Accessibility, Equity, Taxation, Competition and Federal/state coordination. What is not covered is policy for encouraging Australian sharing economy ventures.

Unfortunately the pro-Australian message of the ALP's paper is somewhat weakened by it being distributed via a non-Australian web service and including only examples of non-Australian companies. The message from this might be that the Sharing Economy will consist of Australian money and jobs being funneled out of Australia to foreign multinational companies located in tax havens. It would be a good idea for the ALP to put the paper on a web server located in Australia and, even better, convert it from PDF into a more readable web page (in accordance with accessibility guidelines).

It should not be too difficult to find some Australian examples of the the Sharing Economy. I regularly attend and judge startup competitions and there are always examples of sharing economy ventures. One place to look would be the Canberra Innovation Network and GriffinAccelerator. Another place is the Telstra Muru-D Start-up Accelerator in Sydney.

Also, it would be worth having something in the policy about encouraging the creation of new sharing economy ventures. There is scope for Australia to provide products and services (including education) to support the sharing economy worldwide. There would likely be markets in China, India and Indonesia for this.

There could also be a role for government in the Sharing Economy. The Australian Digital Transformation Office (DTO) is to look at innovative ways to deliver government services. One way would be for the government to help facilitate Australians to help each other.

Mapping the Sharing Economy in Canberra

Greetings from "Share Canberra MapJam" at the Inspire Centre University of Canberra. There are about twenty people in Canberra (and more on-line) looking at mapping community facilities (on open streetmap)in Canberra. This is part of Sharing Cities Network 2nd Annual Global MapJam. Other initiatives are the Melbourne Sharing City Map and Share’n’Save Adelaide. 

I had some difficulties understanding what this event was about. It seems to be in part about non-profit social organizations making use of the Internet and also in part about for-profit Internet social network based businesses. An example is the "sharing economy", where the Internet can be used to allow for resources to be shared more easily than they could be before. Some of this has been done by charities in the past, collecting and redistributing unwanted items, some by for-profit resellers but much has just gone to landfill, due to the high costs. A good example of a successful business are car share companies, such as GoGet.

One area where this model might be applied is education. There is a long tradition of co-operative forms of education, but these have suffered from the transaction costs and accreditation. The
Learning Exchanges of the 1970s would be an example of a form of cooperative education. At the other extreme, the Australian Prime Minister has proposed major corporations should design the school curriculum to produce trained workers for their company.

An aspect of this sharing approach is how they scale. One speaker this morning commented that their business did not take off until their were 10,000 subscribers. This may be a reason why this sharing approach has been difficult to get to work without the Internet, due to the start-up cost of an organization (even if it is non-profit and run by volunteers) which needs 10,000 participants to start delivering benefits.