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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (Senator Carr) to questions without notice asked today relating to the Commercial Ready program.

Of all the decisions taken in the Rudd government’s 2008 budget the one that has been labelled and is the saddest and dumbest, not surprisingly, is a decision that fell within Senator Carr’s area of responsibility. The short-sighted and vindictive cut to the Commercial Ready program puts up in lights for all to see that Labor is about spin and not substance. Before the election Senator Carr ran around telling anyone who cared to listen that the Howard government was neglecting innovation and that he and Mr Rudd would revitalise the sector. In typical Orwellian spin, less now means more to Messrs Rudd and Carr. But can I tell the minister that the sector is telling me that it would prefer the so-called neglect of the Howard years to the so-called care of Mr Rudd and Senator Carr.

You see the Commercial Ready program was a scheme designed to assist innovators commercialise their inventions and get them out into the marketplace. The test to get funding was rigorous and robust. It funded literally hundreds of science graduates and engineers and helped commercialise many, many innovations right around the country—innovations as diverse as cancer cures, fuel-efficient cars and cutting the road toll. Mr Rudd has his education revolution—and today for the first time we were told about a national innovation revolution, which of course is led by a $700 million cut to innovation; that is how we have a revolution. Senator Carr should know, with his extreme left-wing policies, that revolutions always come with a lot of blood on the floor. Of course that is what he has done in relation to the Commercial Ready program and innovation. There is a lot of blood on the floor. He has simply axed any program that has the word ‘commercial’ in it.

Mr Garrett warned, ‘Don’t listen to what we say; look at what we do.’ Weren’t those words prophetic? Senator Carr and Mr Rudd promised increase funding and increased support to the innovation sector. Yet what did they do in the very first budget they could control? They slashed the CSIRO. They slashed the innovation budget. These cuts were both cruel and unnecessary. The minister’s first attempt to justify this saddest and dumbest of decisions the day after the budget was to run the old class warfare line about not providing assistance to millionaires. Only one of the dumbest—and I had better be careful here; I cannot say one of the dumbest ministers, but can I say one of the most intellectually challenged of ministers—could take such a decision and then seek to justify it with this silly Marxist justification about not supporting millionaires. Australia’s future—which is inextricably interwoven with innovation and doing things better, more cleverly and increasing our competitiveness and our productivity—is being jeopardised by a government that is in disarray and engaged in ad hoc decision making. Increasing productivity, for example, is one of the best ways to fight inflation, and that is what innovation is all about: increasing productivity. So what do those opposite say? ‘We have to cut the budget for innovation, which will impact on productivity, to somehow fight inflation.’ It just goes to show the adhocery that went into this current budget.

When you have even a former Labor science minister willing to condemn this decision, when you have got somebody like Sir Gustav Nossal willing to condemn the decision, when you have got the CEO of Cochlear saying it is the saddest and dumbest decision of the entire budget—and can I say, Mr Deputy President, the competition was very high to get the tag of being the saddest and the dumbest; it was a competitive process—I agree with the CEO of Cochlear: this decision to cut the CRP, the Commercial Ready program, was the saddest and the dumbest, and the government stands condemned. (Time expired)