Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Never mind those nasty, inconvenient facts. Never mind those awful facts that get in the way of your case, because the truth is that you have been dreadful at supporting industry and innovation policy for the last two years. We had the great, gold nugget that government must enable people by leaving them alone—government must enable by not helping. You do not enable by exiting. I have been involved in industry and innovation policy for 15 years. I have sat on many innovation councils, and I have not met a single small business or entrepreneur who has not asked for government assistance—not a single one who has not asked for government assistance and who has not had an idea about how government can support them to grow their business to employ more Australians to sell more products. This concept of enabling by exiting, quite frankly, is moronic. It is simply moronic and is ideology without any factual basis.

The one thing I agreed with the member for Longman about—I am actually going to be nice to the member for Longman for two seconds

Opposition members interjecting—

Steady on, I know! It is going to feel strange for a minute! The one thing I agree with him on is that we need to be better at applied research. This country is great at blue sky research, but we need to improve applied research. Our dividend for every dollar we spend on applied research is not great. We do not do it by cutting $2 billion of industry and innovation programs. You do not do it by cutting $500 million that was a precincts program that was specifically designed in response to industry requests to turn research and industry towards each other—$500 million gone because of the philistines over the other side. You do not cut $300 million in venture capital assistance through the IIF's that the last Labor government put in place—gone because those on the other side say that you need venture capital but the government will not provide a role.

I will let the member for Longman into a little secret—Israel is a great paragon of applied research, but you really need to acknowledge the huge role that Israeli government, through the Israeli defence force, has played in supporting those small businesses. It is a complete furphy to say that the Israeli private sector does it by themselves. Again, if you look at innovations from US Silicon Valley, they are all products of the huge US government investment in things such as the defence industry. You need to have a bit of history in this area—a bit of knowledge and a bit of experience—and sadly the member for Longman is lacking.

You just have to look at the contribution from their senior people—their deep commitment to these areas! I went back and looked through Hansard to look at what the new Prime Minister's contribution was on, say, jobs in his 11 years in parliament. The new Prime Minister—when you exclude his speeches about people having done a good job—has mentioned jobs in parliament 18 times. He has mentioned jobs 18 times in his 11 year parliamentary career. He has mentioned innovation 16 times. You can look it up yourselves. By contrast, he has mentioned arrogance and pride 25 times—so he has some self-awareness! He has mentioned rugby, sailing and cafes 18 times, as well—very important things! I would submit that jobs and innovation are slightly more important to talk about than rugby, sailing and cafes, but that this the level of devotion from the new Prime Minister. The new Minister for Industry and Innovation has mentioned innovation 23 times in his 22-year parliamentary career. By contrast, he has mentioned wine and Amanda Vanstone 23 times. He has mentioned 'fixing' 47 times, which is great. And he has mentioned Kathy Jackson and the HSU 20 times. They are the priorities of the new Minister for Industry and Innovation. That is the sad pity of this entire debate. All we get on their side is empty rhetoric, while they cut billions and billions of dollars away from support for innovation, and that is a huge pity. I am keen to hear from the third amigo.

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