Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

The member is interjecting about the small business field officers. They are not obviously in exactly the same locations. Never have we asserted that. The small business field officers go out from place to place, as do members of the BEC. A small business field officer tends to be one person. BECs tend to operate as a team. The BECs, as I indicated, provide any sort of advice in relation to setting up a business or expanding a business—legal advice, commercial advice on marketing and so on.

The basis of the decision making was this. We talked to the BEC Australia network and got from them an indication of those BECs they thought were performing well. We used that as a pilot, if you like: if we could back those that were already performing quite well and were well established, that could provide a positive demonstration effect more broadly. In opposition, I am not saying that any of these processes was absolutely perfect—nor in government. Given the finite resources—and the resources were finite because we were not going to continue the spending binge of the previous government—we needed to make decisions. I thought it was better to fund 36 BECs than none.

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