CARR’S BROKEN RECORD IMPERSONATION A SORRY ACT
25-November-2010
25 November 2010
Innovation Minister Kim Carr must stop impersonating a broken record and stop the spin on the research and development (R&D) changes he wants to force on to Australian businesses.
Mr Carr has this afternoon chosen to use a Ministerial media release to (again) accuse the Coalition of filibustering to prevent a Senate vote on his planned changes to tax incentives for business R&D.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Coalition has been awaiting this debate since September 2009 – and, unlike our political opponents, we have not shied away once from that debate.
Far from backing away from any vote on R&D, we want him to bring one on immediately and to resolve this issue for once and for all.
The reality is that Labor botched its administration of the schedule – and itself chose to prioritise several other items of legislation ahead of the R&D Bill, even for the now-extended sessions on Thursday and Friday.
If Mr Carr was letting the sunshine in and offering full transparency, he would confirm that the Coalition could easily have refused Labor the chance to add the Bill to its planned program (under Senate cut-off orders) this week.
We actually did the opposite.
When he has finished apologising to the business community for his atrocious mismanagement of this issue and his unwillingness to discuss our sensible and practical amendments, he also needs to retract his shameless smear of the Coalition.
Verballing the Opposition is an appalling tactic, and it should not be allowed to conceal the fact that this is a mess entirely of Labor’s own making.