Economic Recovery Fund

Mr COWDREY (Colton) (14:26): My question is to the Treasurer; how much of the $20 million first round of the Economic Recovery Fund has been allocated and spent and how many businesses received funding? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr COWDREY: The cut-off for applications for round one of the Economic Recovery Fund was 15 December last year and to date it is unclear if funds remain unallocated.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Treasurer, Minister for Defence and Space Industries) (14:26): I thank the member for Colton for his question. The Economic Recovery Fund had its first call for submissions, as the member said, at the tail end of last year and there were two streams of bids sought from companies. One stream was for manufacturing companies and another stream was for tourism-related companies.

This has taken a little longer than what we anticipated. Part of the reason is because many of the bids which were submitted—we had 283 bids which were submitted, so a very strong response from businesses—many of the bids which came back were incomplete. When I say 'incomplete', a lot of the submissions which otherwise would have been quite quickly considered, there had to be further work done by Treasury with the proponents to secure, for example, the financial information about the company that was applying for the funds that had not originally been provided. A lot of that work has now been completed and I would anticipate the government will be in a position in the coming weeks to make an announcement about the successful recipients.