Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I was not going to speak again, but I just have to make reference to the examples that Senator Carr gave in respect of claims made under the existing mechanisms for R&D. He talked about the mine and he talked about computer systems. We went through all this at estimates. At estimates we discovered that something like 24 or 28 significant claims had been made. They were all being investigated. It was acknowledged by everybody involved that they should not have been. It is the difference between a claim and a successful claim. We understand how this process works. There have been shots at industry about rorting the system. These claims were not eligible. It has been recognised and acknowledged across the board that these things should not have been claimed. The government is actually dealing with that through its processes. They are being investigated. There is this slinging off at industry. We accept that those claims should not have been made. If you are out there genuinely trying to help people and work on things, that is fine. But let us not have this slagging off at industry. Okay, they have done the wrong thing in this particular case, but it is being dealt with. It should not have qualified under the existing rules, but it was being investigated and managed.

Rather than slinging off at people, let us get on with the process. I would not have been provoked to make a further contribution but we did sit down—and people can go back and review the Hansardduring the estimates process and have a pretty good go at this. We spent a fair bit of time talking about these issues. We had a few moments of agreement even, which was amusing at times. We have looked at this in a pretty genuine way and I do not think it is helpful to go back over things that were well and truly addressed. I am not prepared, given that you have decided that you want to raise it again now, to go over that again. I think we fairly and fully dealt with it at that time. We both understand the circumstances around that, so let us put that aside rather than having a slanging match against industry. We all know how difficult it is out there for them. We do not need to be applying broad-brush imputations to their motives. We know that things that should not have been claimed under the existing regulations and they are being dealt with through a process within the existing scheme.