Any attempt to water down research and development tax concessions will be resisted by the Greens, warned Greens Deputy Leader and research and innovation spokesperson Adam Bandt today.

Responding to speculation about the content of the business tax working group's discussion paper to be released next week, Mr Bandt said the Greens want to see more spent on R&D not less.

"Australia needs to be spending more on research and development, not less," Mr Bandt said.

"The Greens worked hard on getting the recent reforms to the R&D tax system in place. A few months in, we won't look kindly on proposals that remove those changes."

"Given that we need to secure this country's revenue base to fund much needed reforms in education and health, we don't accept that big business needs a tax cut in the first place, let alone by removing tax credits for research and development. It's not on."

"Our current and future prosperity depends on innovation and research. R&D will be even more crucial when the mining boom is over and as we shift to a clean energy economy."

"We are way below where we should be on research and development. The government should set a national target for public and private research spending of 3% of GDP. As a country we are currently well short of that."

The Business Tax Working group is due to release a discussion paper next week and final recommendations in December.