Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I would appreciate your tabling that advice from Treasury, because it was not the advice that was previously provided. Since it is Treasury that has supposedly said this, I would like to see that advice, because a huge amount of work went in to make sure that these governance arrangements went in. As Senator Cormann said, it is intuition that now determines his view of what will or will not happen in relation to this particular amendment. The whole arrangement here in governance is that, of course, if a company gets involved in that then they would not be available for it in the future. This is obviously going to be something that has to be put into practice. Companies would have to have been eligible for this concession in one of the previous five years before they would even be considered, and they would go through those tests ahead of it. So it is not any fly-by-night company that is able to do as it likes. There are clear governance arrangements, clear oversight arrangements, and this amendment is about encouraging R&D in the small- and medium-scale sector.

The minister is being extremely dismissive. I think he owes it to small- and medium-sized companies around Australia to table the advice that he says he has that says this arrangement is going to lead to fraud, given that the same advice was to the contrary previously.