Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

What a great privilege it is to be able to follow Senator Mason in this debate. Having slithered his way into power, promising all sorts of contradictory propositions depending on to whom he was talking at the time, the Prime Minister has now shown his true colours, because with the budget the buck stops with him—no longer the deft positioning, the fancy footwork and the verbal nonsense of speaking in ‘Ruddles’.

The man who said he was, always had been and always will be an economic conservative is now boasting that his first budget is in fact a true Labor budget. I am glad that Labor have finally fessed up, because no-one would agree that a true Labor budget is somehow also economically conservative. Mr Rudd, I suppose, will now tell us that Labor have always been economically conservative—and, as proof positive, just look at the Whitlam era! The simple fact is this: this budget is Australia’s highest-taxing, highest-spending budget ever. That is what makes it a true Labor budget. As a result of it being the highest-taxing, highest-spending budget, what is it predicated on? An extra 134,000 of our fellow Australians on the scrap heap of unemployment. That is what the Labor Party are actually saying that they will deliver as a result of their budget. The silence of welfare groups on this aspect, I must say, is regrettable, albeit not surprising.

The Labor Party inherited a very good budgetary position. Mr Swan and Mr Rudd did not even have to get out of bed to get a budget surplus. Indeed, the Charter of Budget Honesty told us in a statement signed off by the head of Treasury and Finance that inflationary pressures were easing and were of no real concern over the horizon. And that is in fact the truth of the matter. Since coming to power, Labor have sought to promote inflation at four per cent as somehow being a crisis. Well, hello! What was the inflation rate when Labor were in power? It was six per cent plus throughout the total period, and it was never a crisis. It was always ‘the recession that we had to have’ or that we had to have one million people unemployed. All sorts of spin was confected by the Labor Party.

As all credible commentators have said, the budget is at best inflation neutral. I thought inflation was this major crisis, but of course the highest-taxing, highest-spending budget means that, at very best, it can be inflation neutral and, at worst, it will feed into inflation. But one area it is not neutral on is unemployment. It actively, deliberately and heartlessly seeks to grow unemployment. The Australians who were promised relief on petrol prices, groceries, mortgages and rentals were delivered absolutely nothing. Be they pensioners or the so-called working families, they got nothing for voting Labor. Well, that is not exactly right; I suppose I will have to correct myself: they did get Peter Costello’s tax cuts and Wayne Swan’s tax increases—increases that will push up the price of every car and hit the workers in the Australian automotive industry. They got the condensate tax, which will actually increase the price of petrol. But motorists, I am sure, will be reassured that the government, at the taxpayers’ expense, have in fact appointed somebody to watch the fuel price go up—a FuelWatch Commissioner. On the one hand they have promised, ‘We’ll appoint a FuelWatch Commissioner,’ while, on the other hand, they have a deliberate policy that will increase the price of petrol in this country.

The problem with Labor is not only the damage that they do in the short term; it is also the long-term impact, and that is the area that I seek to concentrate on this afternoon. It is in the long-term view of our great country that the government have not only dropped the ball but deliberately thrown it away. Australia’s future has always been built on the ingenuity and innovation of its current researchers, scientists and small and medium enterprises. Our wealth today as a society—financially, socially and environmentally—has been built on past innovation. Tomorrow’s wealth is being built today by the creativeness and innovation of today’s researchers, innovators and small business people.

So in giving Australia this so-called new leadership, looking to the future, Labor and Mr Rudd have made their most savage cuts in what areas? In our premier research institutions—from the CSIRO, to ANSTO, to DSTO. And not content with that, just in case there is still someone out there innovative enough to develop something that might have commercial prospects, Mr Rudd has not only cut but in fact abolished—I stress ‘abolished’, and I know it is hard to believe—the cost-effective and popular Commercial Ready program and has done so without warning. This stupid but, we are told, deliberate decision—therefore, this deliberately stupid decision—to axe completely the Commercial Ready program and cut funding to our premier research organisations will leave Australia behind the eight ball for years and years to come.

When the usually mild Australian Academy of Science attacks this measure as strangling Australia’s R&D and innovation sector, you do have to sit up and take note and not give the regrettable, typical, rhetorical and empty vitriolic response that Senator Carr gave in question time yesterday. The government is clearly sending a message that innovation, science and research are not important and, what is more, if you do happen to create some great innovation, Labor definitely will not help you to commercialise it. Believe it or not, the Commercial Ready program, which AusBiotech and a host of others have praised as being cost-effective and the most useful government program, is now being denigrated by Labor.

Interestingly, when asked about these cuts yesterday, Minister Carr did not have the courage to say that the highly popular and effective Commercial Ready program was money badly spent. Indeed, in his answer, he tried to dress up this deliberately stupid and short-sighted decision in economic rhetoric. He did not have the courage to denigrate the program. In a sinister twist, hapless Labor backbenchers have been given speaking notes which tell them how to defend the axing of the Commercial Ready program. These are the words they have been told to utter—and foolishly they have repeated them to some of the beneficiaries in the community: the Commercial Ready program ‘was helping businesses that didn’t actually need help’, and ‘it was public money badly spent.’ If Minister Carr honestly believes that, why did he not have the guts to say it in this chamber yesterday in response to my question? Instead, he tries to dress it up in some economic rhetoric and then give his hapless backbenchers speaking notes on this, seeking to denigrate a very popular and cost-effective program.

The letters, emails, faxes and telephone calls that my office has been receiving—in a virtual deluge—have expressed absolute disbelief at the fork-tongued approach of the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research. Before the election he was going around saying: ‘I’ll be the champion of innovation. We’ll spend more on science and research, we’ll help you innovate and we’ll thereby increase productivity’—and that, as a result, a lot of the claims the government were making about its industrial relations system would be viable and believable. That myth has been exposed by their very actions in cutting so heartlessly the Commercial Ready program, which was designed to—and did so very effectively—allow small and medium sized businesses, run by people in their backyards and people who have mortgaged their houses, to pursue their innovations and get them ready for market. Instead, how dismissive the minister was in answer to my question yesterday. It is very instructive when you listen to part of what he had to say:

We had this expectation that we should go on providing assistance … to millionaires …

Can I tell the minister, Mr Rudd and the Labor government that those who are in the innovation sector, those scientists who have partnered with universities and other institutions all around this country, are not millionaires. They are people who work very long hours and have a passion for and a commitment to their particular innovations, which in the future may deliver huge dividends for this country and, as a result, for all of us. But because we have an ideologically driven minister in this area, I am quite sure that, when the expenditure review committee came along, he said: ‘Yeah, I’ll put up my hand. Cut out $700 million from the Commercial Ready program. I’ve never liked business, I’ve never liked private enterprise, so why bother assisting them?’ How else does he explain his outrageous comment about providing support to millionaires in this program?

This program was designed to—and does—support small and medium enterprises. There are biotechnology companies—basically, one, two or sometimes up to five committed and passionate individuals—making a difference in diverse areas such as breast cancer research and agricultural research. You name it, in every facet of Australian life these people have been dedicating themselves to making a difference—and not only for Australia. Some of their innovations are world firsts, world leading and world class. This visionary Rudd government—which dines out at 2020 summits and talks about innovation—slashes and burns the innovation portfolio at the very first opportunity it gets.

It is clear from the phone calls, emails faxes and telephone calls that I have received about the minister’s attempted slur of these people—he called them ‘millionaires’—and the handing out of speaking notes to backbenchers to denigrate this scheme has gone down very badly. These people quite rightly feel betrayed by this minister and by this government. The problem is that this betrayal, while it may not necessarily be noticed today or tomorrow or indeed next year, will be felt for decades to come.

I was talking to a group of researchers in Western Australia just before I walked into the chamber. They said that one of their research programs has already been approached by an overseas company. That company said: ‘We’ve got money and we’re willing to invest in you. If the Australian government doesn’t have faith in you, that’s fine—we do.’ Scientists by the dozen will be losing their jobs as a result of this measure. Indeed, this truly Labor budget is predicated on an extra 100,000-plus unemployed people—and many of them will come from our research and science facilities. They will be on the unemployment list but for one thing—that is, going overseas. That is the grand vision of Mr Rudd and Labor, in their first budget, in the discrete area of innovation, industry, science and research—for which I happen to have responsibility.

We now have it, if you were to believe Senator Carr, that somehow, in George Orwell speak—it is truly Rudd speak, this—less is more, that we are doing innovation a favour by axing $700 million of funding. What is so cruel about this is there was no consultation about this measure. What is more, many small companies have employed consultants—to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars—to prepare their applications for the Commercial Ready program and are now told: ‘Well, that’s wasted money.’ No compensation is to be offered. Even if you have already mailed your application on the day of the budget, having spent tens of thousands of dollars, your application will be heartlessly disregarded. Not only is it heartless; it is stupid.

I do not know how I can get through to the minister and the government how stupidly short-sighted this cut in the innovation grants in the Commercial Ready program is. What is more, it is absolutely insulting, because the minister himself has appointed a review into innovation to look at all these things. Indeed, this innovation review has received over 600 submissions from Australian innovators all around this great country. A common theme is: the Commercial Ready program is cost-effective, popular and delivering where it counts.

If Senator Carr were to say, ‘Look, I don’t think it’s a good scheme; it could be enhanced,’ let him say so. But just to chop it and not replace it with anything else during a review is an insult to the chairman of that review, Dr Cutler—I dare say he gets paid for that job. What is more, it is an insult to all those 600 individuals and organisations, many of whom have used volunteer hours to put in submissions, just to be so high-handedly disregarded by this, some would say, arrogant minister—I actually think he just does not get it.

We have a situation now where Labor are boasting that they have delivered a truly Labor budget. I happen to agree with them. It is a truly Labor budget: highest taxing ever, highest spending ever, predicated on unemployment. But worse than that and on top of all that is the fact that they are prejudicing the future of young Australians and future generations by their short-sighted approach to the vital areas of innovation, industry, science and research. What it highlights is that the minister has no capacity in cabinet to prosecute the case for this vital area for Australia’s future. I invite the government to seriously reconsider its positioning in this and, in particular, to use the opportunity of Dr Cutler’s review to reinstate the Commercial Ready program. If pride gets in the way, give it a different name, call it something else, say it is your very own baby, but reinstate the program, because that is what Australia needs.