Cochlear chief executive Chris Roberts believes cutting funding for innovation was the dumbest decision of the federal budget.
Canberra firms commercialising their products are among hundreds in Australia to have invested hours and money applying for funding under the Commercial Ready program. Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Minister Kim Carr said anyone who said the budget wasn't tough should look at this decision, which saved the Government $700million.
Dr Roberts, who will speak at an exporters' breakfast in Canberra this morning, said the money was to be matched equally, which meant $1.4billion was lost for the future. ''That was the saddest and dumbest decision out of the entire budget, but I think a lot of people were stunned at that and were disappointed.''
Senator Carr said the Government was reviewing the National Innovation System.
Cochlear, a hearing implants leader whose formative stages were helped by government funding, paid $200million back in taxes.
Canberra-based Kord Defence raised $1million from an investor, completed financial reports, and submitted its application for matching funding, to no avail.
Managing director Dr Peter Moran said Kord was denied procedural fairness by a short-sighted decision that created a policy vacuum.
An Australian software firm with a research and development history, Intelledox, has a similar story. Its general manager in Canberra, Michelle Melbourne, said $1.2million of private equity funds from Singapore was secured to meet the dollar-for-dollar funding criteria.
The project would continue, but without government funding it would lose crucial momentum ahead of its competitors.
Canberra Business Council chief executive Chris Faulks said reputable Canberra companies invested tens of thousands of dollars in time and money on applications within days of final approval. ''At the very least, the Rudd Government must allow the process to be completed for those companies caught with their applications in the last stages of the assessment process,'' she said.
Ms Melbourne has returned from Microsoft headquarters in the United States, where senior executives told her trade delegation Australians were at the cutting edge of technology. She said if Intelledox was in Seattle, she'd have $10million by Friday for commercialising the software program, a next generation web-based collaboration tool which collected and centralised enterprise information fragments.
''We were just days away from a decision on the grant application, that we were expecting to be positive, as the matched funding element was the final milestone to achieve,'' she said. ''After close to 18 months and 1000 hours of effort, conservatively $200,000 of sunk costs it is an injustice to have the doors slammed on us after so much work.''