Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Actually, it is not technically an approval, because you only qualify for relevant incentives once relevant expenditure has occurred, consistent with the requirements in the legislation. What relevant businesses are required to do is preregister the activity that they might want to make a claim in relation to. That is all.

I note that Senator Carr does not accept responsibility at all, even though he was a minister in the Gillard and Rudd governments, which put this measure on the table and which had it as part of their pre-election costings in the lead-up to the last election. He does not accept any responsibility for the fact that this is a measure which was announced in 2013-14 in Labor's last budget, with a starting date of 1 July 2013. We have delayed the starting date by one year, to 1 July 2014, in recognition of the fact that delays caused by Labor against the implementation of their own budget measure have made that necessary. The practical effect is that this will only impact on companies lodging tax returns after 1 July 2015. It is a measure which was announced in 2013. It will not impact on businesses until after 1 July 2015, which is very much prospective. There cannot be any doubt that relevant businesses in the marketplace had very good notice of the government's intentions in relation to this particular change.