Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I in no way impugn Mr Mortimer that he would be so silly as to be a member of Senator Conroy’s branches. But he did, as I understand it, carry out the review. He reported in September 2008, and Minister Crean promised that a government response would be available by the end of the year. I remember questioning the government at length about this at the estimates committee hearings in 2008, and the indication was, ‘Yes, we’ll have a response by the end of December 2008.’ That response did not eventuate, but it was promised again in the 2009-10 budget and then again in the 2010-11 budget. We are still waiting for a response from the government and the minister to the Mortimer report. We suspect that there has not been a response from the government because most of what Mr Mortimer recommended—and I take Senator Conroy’s interjection that he is a very good and very clever man and that he would have done a very good report—was that the earlier changes of Minister Crean be reversed. So obviously Mr Crean is not too keen on an investigation that more or less says, ‘Mr Crean, you have no idea what you are doing and I recommend that your proposals be reversed.’

As a result of this administrative activity and mismanagement by the Labor Party in relation to supporting and developing our exports, particularly by small business, we find that there is no certainty, and business needs certainty. Mr Truss, the shadow minister for trade in the other place, in dealing with this issue listed at length the impact on a number of small businesses that the government’s lack of certainty has caused. People who have spent money in the expectation of getting a full grant or an almost full grant have been disappointed. They have spent the money and they are not going to get reimbursed by the government, in spite of every expectation the government gave them that they would be reimbursed. That again demonstrates that the Labor Party, as is being shown in the mining tax debacle, has no interest in business. They do not understand business and do not understand the certainty necessary. As I indicated, we will be supporting the bill and I commend it to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.