Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Industry and Science) Share this | Hansard source

USIC (—) (): I know the member for Bennelong wants to make a contribution. I am happy to take on board any other points that he or other members of the coalition who are here wanting to ask but I just want to quickly touch on some of the points that were being raised either by the shadow minister or the shadow assistant minister. I can deal with the other issues the shadow minister for science raised separately. To the shadow minister for industry, we are obviously working to stand up the NRF corporation. You asked me a question about when the first investment will be made. Again, the big difference, philosophically, between us and the coalition is we are not going to be dictating funding thorough a grants process. Even the coalition know that at some point they do need to account for the way in which they made decisions based on colour-coded spreadsheets; they need to come forward and be accountable for that. We're not doing that. We are simply not doing that.

Shadow assistant minister, I will come back on MMI as a case in point, but we want a board stood up that will make those independent investment decisions guided by an investment mandate. We are going through that work developing that, and those details will be released in the near future. we are very determined to make sure that growth capital is available for firms to help them grow. If they want to onshore manufacturing, if they want to keep manufacturing in Australia and they have a way within priority areas to do that, we definitely want to back them up.

Even the shadow ministers for industry and science both reference space. We have said it will be included in a number of priority areas where they will have the capital. Levering off the shadow minister for science's respect for private investment and private market, with a co-investment fund where we can attract potentially support from VC, private equity or superannuation funds. Those propositions that stand up, that can deliver a rate of return and that will be able to demonstrate longer term viability will get that funding support. But it will not be for me to say 'you must' or 'thou shalt' determine when an investment will be made at what point. Those days of ministers making those calls are over.

To shadow assistant minister Ley, the big difference is we get the role of grants, but with the MMI, 85 per cent of these grants were announced in the weeks leading up to the election. This MMI program was set up in 2020. Why wasn't this steadily being provided grant support to businesses getting back on their feet through lockdown? What happened? The decisions were being made on the basis of political convenience rather than national urgency. This is the big difference between us and them. Any of our grant programs, we will build in. We want people to have confidence, and the general public are tired of grants programs that have been contorted and distorted under the coalition continuing in that way. There is a better way to do things, and we will do it.

Now, the coalition will say the MMI was fantastic. Well, look at the collaboration round. Theoretically, it sounded fine on paper, but trying to get that collaboration to work has been horrendously complex, and you are seeing proponents dropping like flies because they cannot stand these things up. Again, we have seen how the grant programs set up by the coalition have been executed—all out of political interest not national interest. We're just not going to go down that path of doing things in the way the coalition did. We respect and reflect community views about the way taxpayer funds should be used. On things like space, the money will be there. On things like AI and quantum, we have announced funds. For quantum, we have set up a critical technologies target fund within the NRF to make sure that that is backed in as well.

I will make this final point. Certainly, those opposite will point to things where we have repurposed or cut funds. You cannot tell us that we have to fight inflation, cut government spending and then, the minute we do it, pick out things and say, 'No, you cannot cut that.' We are trying to do the right thing by the economy, trying to take up the fight to inflation, put downward pressure on interest rates and make sure that the capital, particularly growth capital, that they voted against is available in the NRF to back Australian industry.

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