Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens will be supporting this amendment, it being the same amendment as our amendment (5) on sheet 7665. The reduction in R&D funding that would occur through this schedule, cutting 1.5 per cent from research and development, is entirely the wrong direction than we need to be taking as a country. We are already trailing far behind our trading partners and other countries like Germany, the UK and the US, and are outspent in research and development by key trading partners like Korea and Japan. We need measures that increase the amount of support and funding to research and development, not cutting it back. There is no justification for reducing expenditure on science and research and development.

This is particularly highlighted and underlined by the fact that already, before implementing this measure, we have the lowest expenditure on science, research and innovation since Treasury started publishing data in the late 1970s. We are set to spend less this year than we did in 1979. This is just appalling. This is not the Australia of the 21st century. It is not direction our economy needs to be heading in. We need to be supporting research and development. The R&D tax offset is just one measure that is part of that support for a country that really values science, that values research and development, and that knows where the future of our economy needs to be headed.

The TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN: The question is that schedule 3 stand as printed.

Question negatived.