Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

You have got to give me a chance to finish, Member for Grey. Obviously, no one likes to see subsidies withdrawn. The truth is: subsidies are pretty intoxicating. Governments of all persuasions need to be pretty careful about subsidies, because once they are in place they are very difficult to remove and very difficult to review. It is not a partisan thing; I think the whole body politic, perhaps, is a little enamoured of subsidies—the public is as well. We really have to run a much stronger public interest test across all of them before we introduce them. If we continue with the current view on subsidies—including those available under 'direct action', which would be an orgy of picking winners, an orgy of public money going to the private sector—if we are not very careful about this, if this and other parliaments around the country are not open and honest about the costs of such subsidies and apply a far more rigorous public interest test, the country will be poorer. For this reason, the South Australian government and its KPMG review should be applauded and not condemned. (Time expired)

See this speech in context