Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

It is my pleasure to stand up on behalf of the Minister for Industry and to provide the summing up on this bill, and to speak in favour of the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Investment and Innovation Programs Amendment Bill 2014. The bill amends the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Investment and Innovation Programs Act 1999, to close both the TCF Small Business Program, known as TCFSBP, and the Clothing and Household Textile (Building Innovative Capability) scheme, known as the BIC scheme, on 30 June 2014, which will deliver savings to the budget of $25 million in 2015-16.

I must congratulate my colleagues, the member for Tangney, the member for Swan and the member for Hughes for their enlightened contributions to this debate. But I also must point out that some of those members opposite made some mistakes in their speeches to this House on this bill. For example, the member for Indi said that businesses that undertake activities under the BIC scheme will not be reimbursed for their activities in 2013-14; that is not correct. They will get some reimbursement for those activities. The member for Melbourne said that the BIC scheme was for small business; he is wrong. The BIC scheme is for big business, and there is the SBP scheme which is actually for small business.

But I think the point that we need to reinforce in this place is that these original programs were put in place to ensure a transition to a lower-tariff regime, and since 2001-02 the Commonwealth has provided, in grants, over $1.2 billion in taxpayers' money for the TCF industry—a very considerable sum of money over an extended period of time. But now is the time to take the hard decisions to repay Labor's debt and to bring the budget back into balance.

Those opposite can put their heads in the sand and pretend that we do not have to take any tough decisions. But you know what? Every independent authority is telling this government: 'You have to take tough decisions,' to repay Labor's debt and to wind back some of the spending commitments that our political predecessors gave us. The International Monetary Fund has told us that, of 17 advanced economies in the world, Australia has the fastest rate of spending. The independent Parliamentary Budget Office has said that we have massive spending commitments that also need to be pulled back. Then you had the Commission of Audit, which said that business as usual is not an option. This is a result of the $667 billion debt legacy that you bequeathed the Abbott coalition government.

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