Steve Baxter, an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur will deliver the 10th McIlwraith Lecture.

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.

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.

He set up River City Labs, which is an incubator designed to produce more innovators and entrepreneurs like himself, but now busies himself with 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.

To book click here.