Submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Trade and Investment Growth

IGEA has made a submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Trade and Investment Growth on its Inquiry into supporting Australia’s exports and attracting investments.

Under its terms of reference, the Committee is investigating and reporting on Australian businesses’ ambitions to grow via export and attracting investments, and identifying barriers to, and best practices that may help support, export and investment growth.

We believe that the video game development industry can play an important role in Australia’s future economy and must be given the opportunity to reach its full potential. The $200 billion global video games market provides unparalleled opportunities for Australia’s export-orientated game development businesses, while the tens of billions of dollars of game development activity being conducted around the world each year provides an enormous and unique source of future foreign investment.

Our submission outlines the opportunity that can be gained from this industry and how the Government can achieve it. In particular, our submission highlights the impact that a federal tax offset for game development, similar to the schemes in place for film and television content, will lead to tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in investments, thousands of new jobs and a pipeline of skills and talent that will not only benefit our industry but the broader media and high tech sectors.