Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry) Share this | Hansard source

I know there is a dispute on the quality of wines all over Australia, but what is important is that we provide the support for people to export our agricultural product. This is not only our wines but also some of our fresh foods. New markets, particularly Asian markets, are to be encouraged and supported. One of the other companies in my region who accessed export market development grants in previous rounds is Weathertex, who took an old product like masonite, took that technology and turned it into weatherboard sidings. They have not only saved an old factory and kept workers on, they have also expanded into international markets, particularly into the European markets, with their pre-painted weatherboard siding. The Hunter Valley is also becoming the home to the mining support services industry. A lot of those technologies and products are exported.

If people in other countries do not know what you have on offer, how can they buy it? So it is about going to the trade shows, it is about having the displays, it is about making sure people can see and understand. The essence of building an international business is actually the relationship, and that relationship needs to be addressed face to face. You need to build the relationship before you can build the business and that is where these grants come in. This is not only limited to, as I said, tourism, wine, wood products or mining industries. Even industries in our region like music and software have accessed the export market development grants and built businesses on the back of them.

When you live in a country that has roughly 23 million people, your market is limited. You need to expand globally, to pick up more markets, to increase the economies of scale of your business. We need to encourage small business. As I said earlier, the last two bills brought in during the reign of the previous Labor government saw the money for export market development grants cut from $200 million to $150 million. Just when we thought that this was as bad as it could be, they cut it from $150 million to $125 million and put more conditions on the small to medium enterprises in particular that wanted to access the grants to grow their business. They should be condemned for that. Yet we heard a number of speakers on the Labor side stand up and talk about how wonderful export market development grants are and how great they are for manufacturing. I would like to ask them: why did they not speak up when their own government was cutting the budget?

I commend this bill to the House because, while I support all industry, I support small to medium enterprises in particular. They put their own skin in the game, determined to take the risk, and when government supports them and gives them a hand-up and access to those markets, they can achieve their maximum potential. I commend this bill to the House.

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