Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome this bill and wholeheartedly support the changes to the Export Market Development Grants Scheme that the bill will achieve. The bill delivers practical yet important changes to the Export Market Development Grants, EMDG, Scheme to assist small and medium enterprises to gain access to new markets or to enhance their engagement with existing markets. As we have heard from previous coalition speakers, small to medium enterprises certainly are the backbone of the Australian economy. In fact, they are very much the engine room of the Australian economy, as we just heard from the member for Hinkler.

As the minister highlighted in his introductory speech, this bill delivers on yet another coalition election commitment to progressively restore, and increase, funding to support our exporters which was removed by the previous government. I recall speaking against Labor's bill on 12 March last year which cut funding from this very scheme when Labor shamelessly ripped $25 million a year out of the EMDG to fill its ever-growing budget black hole at the time. It was so shameless because it came at a time when our exporters were struggling under the weight—the very weight—of a high Australian dollar, the weight of a new carbon tax and the burden of significant red tape.

In my electorate of the Riverina exporters were also facing the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, which Labor made so very difficult for those people.

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