Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the member for Melbourne's motion. I congratulate him on the words that he has put together in this motion, calling on the Treasurer to 'guarantee that science and research funding will be protected this financial year' and calling on the Treasurer to 'rule out any attempt to defer, freeze or pause' research grants for our science and medical facilities. The problem is that the member for Melbourne has been gazumped by the Treasurer. Only last week we had released the MYEFO, in which we have seen $500 million worth of cuts to our research funding, and it goes further than that. With the freezes taken in, we are looking at about $1 billion worth of cuts that this government has made. Universities Australia have said the research freezes and other cuts would slash $1 billion from our universities. Is this the time when we should be cutting funding given the need for our research and development? I have an interesting quote from Universities Australia chief executive Belinda Robertson:

By reducing research funding we are cutting the very area that provides us with the greatest hope of underpinning long-term industrial diversification and economic transformation.

The chief executive is right. This is not the time for us to cut funding for our research. Why are we cutting it? As the member for Melbourne notes in his motion, it is 'an attempt to achieve a budget surplus'. Those on the other side of this House have not delivered a budget surplus for over 21 years. An entire generation of Australians have not seen a single budget surplus from those on that side. In fact, what they have seen over the last four years are combined deficits of no less than $174 billion—and here we have this latest attempt to achieve a budget surplus which we all know is nothing other than a political charade, a fix, an accounting fudge and a money shuffle by transferring money from one year to the other to come up with what they expect as a $1.1 billion surplus.

What if they were even to achieve this $1.1 billion surplus? We know, following the brilliantly designed mining tax which has failed to raise even one single cent, that they have already spent the money, so we know the surplus has gone and we know it is a fudge but let us take them at their word that they do achieve this $1.1 billion surplus. To undo the damage of the last four years with the $174 billion in deficits they have run up it is going to take us over 120 years to repay, so that is for that $1.1 billion surplus, just to undo the damage of the last four years.

Although government funded research is important, we must make sure that it is targeted to improve the productivity of the nation and to improve health outcomes. We must make sure this research is not wasted.

Unfortunately, one of the reasons we are in the budgetary mess that this government has made is the great waste created from their grants program. In the time remaining, I would like to go through a few of the grants that this government has handed out over recent years. We have seen this government hand out a grant for $85,000 for a study of garden statues in Renaissance gardens. We have seen this government hand out a grant for $185,000 to produce a biography on Labor opposition leader Doc Evatt during the 1950s and how his life resonates with modern challenges in a time of global warming. I am not sure what Doc Evatt's life has to do with global warming. We have also seen a grant of $65,000 for a study of who reads books by Thomas Keneally. I myself have read books by Thomas Keneally, but do we really need to spend our research grant money, taking away money from cancer research and from other important areas of research that our economy relies on, on a study of who reads books by Thomas Keneally? And then there is my favourite: a grant of $60,000 for the study of Marxism and religion and the relationship between theology and politics. We need to get rid of these grants and get the focus back on the things that are important to our economy.

Debate adjourned.

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