CANBERRA—The federal government has overhauled its business grants scheme, with a new policy of giving grants only to help ventures move from research to production start-up.
Funding for the new Commercialisation Australia program is expected to begin in early 2010, with taxpayers to invest $196 million over four years.
Case managers will be assigned for the first time to firms that win commonwealth funding.
The announcement comes 18 months after Labor axed the Howard government's Commercial Ready program, which gave grants for commercial activities as well as research and development.
The Department of Innovation's policy general manager Tricia Berman said restricting funding to commercial activities would deliver better value for money.
"The taxpayer's dollar should be supporting things that otherwise wouldn't be going ahead," she told AAP on Wednesday.
"If a firm is capable of doing that without government, we don't believe that should be supported with taxpayer money."
Ms Berman said firms could already take advantage of increased research and development tax concessions, announced in the May budget.
Innovation Minister Kim Carr described Commercialisation Australia, previously known as the Commonwealth Commercialisation Institute, as a "radical new program" which would tailor funding to applicants' needs.
But his opposition counterpart, Eric Abetz, said Labor's Commercialisation Australia scheme was a "poor imitation" of Commercial Ready, which Labor axed in the 2008 budget.
Under the Commercialisation Australia program, firms can claim up to $2 million to help them start up production.
Taxpayer subsidies are capped at 50 per cent.
Firms that have not built a prototype or done testing of their idea can seek up to $250,000 from the commonwealth, with the government co-contribution also limited to 50 per cent.
Another component of the scheme gives firms up to $50,000 as a part of a capacity and skills program.
It allows recipients to get 80 per cent of project costs from the taxpayer.
Australian Industry Group's chief executive Heather Ridout said Commercialisation Australia had potential.
"It will go some way to filling the void created by the removal of the popular Commercial Ready program in 2008, which allocated around $200 million per year to assist in the commercialisation process," she said.
Labor axed the $707 million grants scheme for small and medium businesses in last year's budget.
Australia's leading research universities, known as the Group of Eight (Go8), welcomed the new program, with its chairman Alan Robson saying it would help the university sector engage with industry.
