Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

For the record, I was referring to the minister for industry. Last time I checked, the minister for industry was male. He talked about how the Chief Scientist made a quote at the start of the process and at the end of the process, and I said, 'In fairness to the minister, I'll quote both.' She said—the Chief Scientist, Cathy Foley:

I was also put off by the "salesman" push and lack of detail in the information provided and how it was presented.

I really dug in and was very negative giving the company a pretty hard time about this as an investment and where their capability had got to.

She also said:

This is a high risk, high return venture …

That is what we're talking about. Picking one company as a winner is high-risk. It's like going into the casino and putting everything on black. What the minister should have done, what the industry wants and what the industry needs, was have a testbed strategy where you invest that money in the whole quantum industry.

We go to the Saturday Paper and how they quoted Minister Husic. This is from an industry insider, who said: 'This is a minister who is a conviction politician, who gets very excited and very enthusiastic about big ideas that can potentially change the nation. But the downside is that when this same minister is presented with advice that goes against one of those big ideas, he really loses his mind.' And that's what has happened in this situation. Minister Husic got dazzled in Silicon Valley when he was over there. He decided that PsiQuantum was the place to go. He was prepared to put it all on black. He did not listen to any advice once he'd made his decision. He then set up a process to make sure that that decision was ratified. When there's a billion dollars of taxpayer money being used, you need more than a sham EOI process.

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