Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2017-05-09 Daily Xml

Contents

Automotive Transformation

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (15:20): Supplementary: how much have you spent now? We are not talking about October. How much have you spent now of the $21 million?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Employment, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation, Minister for Manufacturing and Innovation, Minister for Automotive Transformation, Minister for Science and Information Economy) (15:20): I do not have the exact figures. I am happy to take it on notice, but the latest meeting I had about this was that we were on track to spend all the money in the Automotive Supplier Diversification Program by October. It is just as well that we had the foresight not to listen to this mob and try to spend all the money at the early stage when companies were not ready for it, as it seems they might have done. I have to say, here is part of the hypocrisy here. We regularly hear members saying that we have done too much, that we should not have been that generous in terms of our support for auto. We will not apologise for that. We are a Labor government; that is what we do.