Govt won’t reveal ‘highly distressing’ list of businesses who received $26M in pandemic grants

A list of businesses dished out $26M in grants by the state government to survive the COVID-19 pandemic will remain a secret despite calls for it to be made public.

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THE names of businesses which shared in more than $26m in taxpayer-funded grants during the COVID pandemic will not be revealed because it would be “highly distressing”, Small Business Minister Sarah Courtney says.

The state government released several rounds of grant funding as part of its stimulus package to assist businesses.

Appearing before state parliament’s Public Accounts Committee on Monday, Ms Courtney rejected Labor’s calls to reveal who the money had been paid to.

Sarah Courtney. Picture: Zak Simmonds

“These are Tasmanian men and women that have been through the most horrific year in their businesses,” she said.

“I don’t want to do anything at all to compound the distress that they’ve had both emotionally, but also the potential hardship on their businesses.

“Publicising the names of applicants and recipients could seriously exacerbate the already high levels of personal stress suffered by business owners and often by their employees and families.

“Disclosure of applicant business names could also provide information to each business’s competitors regarding its likely financial position and this could expose businesses to disadvantage.”

Labor’s Treasury spokesman David O’Byrne said the details of the successful applicants should be released.

David O'Byrne. Picture: NIKKI DAVIS-JONES

“Ultimately it’s in the public interest, isn’t it surely, to say that we have a grant program, we have very clear guidelines,” he said.

“It’s taxpayers’ money. If people apply for it they apply with … full knowledge that it’s other people’s money, it’s taxpayers’ money and accountability must, must be delivered.

“And in terms of being transparent around which companies, we’re not asking for commercial-in-confidence details, we’re just asking for the name of the company that received a public taxpayer grant under a grant program with very clear guidelines, surely that’s in the public interest.”

But Department of State Growth secretary Kim Evans backed his minister.

“We do take openness and transparency very seriously and we do regularly make public details of grants but again would highlight the difference between our normal grant programs whereby people are competing to do something very positive, to these hardship and emergency grants whereby people were under absolute distress, they were (under) an enormous amount of uncertainty, and they’re still feeling … a lot of that today,” he told the committee.

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