CARR SPOOKED AGAIN – LEAVES BUSINESS IN R&D LIMBO
25-November-2010
25 November 2010
Innovation Minister Kim Carr has double-crossed Australian industry again this week by failing to allow the Senate to vote on his proposed changes to research and development (R&D) tax arrangements.
For the third time in five months, Mr Carr has been spooked by the possibility of defeat – and has opted to back away from a vote on the R&D Bill.
After months of empty Government rhetoric about the apparent urgency of passing this legislation, complete confusion reigns.
Businesses lack the certainty to plan their current and future R&D activities.
It’s pitiful that any Minister should prefer avoiding a personal defeat in Parliament to ending uncertainty for thousands of innovative Australian enterprises – and, in doing so, he reaffirms his indifference to the needs of these firms.
Mr Carr must immediately reassure the business community that the Government will now (at the very least) abandon its agenda to make its changes to the system retrospective.
He must also re-think his ongoing belligerence in refusing to release all of the Government’s modelling of the impacts of his policy.
Debate on this issue (if it should indeed ever occur in the Senate) must proceed on the basis of all available information.