Sarah Henderson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

Assistant Minister, thank you for partially answering my question, but I am deeply concerned that, in trying to explain why the government has cut this funding, this has been characterised as a small cut. This is not a small cut. This government and the Minister for Education, Mr Clare, have shown contempt for the research sector by cutting more than $102 million in the 2023-24 MYEFO in December. They slashed $46.2 million from the Australia's Economic Accelerator program and clawed back a further $56.3 million by cancelling the Regional Research Collaboration Program—two very significant research programs delivered by the former coalition government. So, when you characterise these shocking cuts as small amounts of funding, I think the facts speak for themselves, Minister. I would again ask you to explain why $102 million of funding was cut from research.

I would also ask you to address the other part of my question, which you conveniently did not address, and that is: what has happened to Labor's commitment to increase research funding to three per cent of GDP? Is this another broken promise? All we have seen from this government in nearly two years is broken promises, wrong priorities and bad decisions. So I say to you, Assistant Minister, that you owe it to the Australian people to explain this massive cut to research funding and to explain what has happened to Labor's election commitment. Given you are cutting research funding, not adding any money to research funding, this is on track to being another big, fat broken promise by this government. I look forward to you providing the further information, Assistant Minister.