Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. It's also about business because, last Friday, while on the South Coast of New South Wales, I was told about businesses which did not burn down but had taken a huge hit to their income because of the bushfires. Why aren't these businesses eligible for grants—only loans that are going to push them even further into debt?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I can update the House that in New South Wales 172 applications have been made for those small business grants. Forty-six have been paid out—worth over $600,000. As the member may recall, because I advised him of this last week through an answer to a question from another member, the grant applications are assessed by the New South Wales state government and managed by them. They make the payments and we reimburse those payments. That has been the arrangement under this government and under the previous government.

When it comes to the guidelines that are developed for assessing whether grants are provided in circumstances like this, we have not departed from the previous practice that we inherited, which was all about damage to those businesses. That damage could include things like power being cut off and things of that nature. Those businesses that may—and I don't mean just 'may', because it is significant—have only had a loss of income as a result of a loss of tourist trade, what we have provided to them, through this category D assistance, are zero-interest loans, nothing to pay for two years, and then at concessional rates beyond that out to 10, which is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to those businesses, should they seek to take those up. They are the same arrangements that have been put in place for previous disasters. I was in Townsville on Friday, where we had floods a year ago, and we are still rebuilding from those floods. I think it's important that we provide the same assistance to those who were in North Queensland at that time as we are today. We're ensuring a consistency in our approach, and that was the consistency that had been established. I see you shake your head, but if you're saying it should be different then why didn't the Labor Party change it when they were in government? We're using your rules.