John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move opposition amendments (1) and (2) together:

(1)

Schedule 1, item 4, page 4 (line 6), omit “small business”, substitute “eligible business”.

(2)

Schedule 1, page 3 (line 2) to page 15 (line 28), omit “small business”, wherever occurring, substitute “eligible business”.

There is no question, in my view, that this bill requires amendment. There is a threshold question that the minister must answer immediately, and that is: how will the government ensure that the system will work this time, given the monumental failures last time? It is time to stop paying lip-service to the needs of rural communities by accepting the failures of the past and giving assurances that those failures will not be repeated.

The government made an earlier attempt to assist small businesses affected by drought through the Small Business Interest Rate Relief program. The Australian National Audit Office 2004-05 performance audit into drought assistance noted that 17,500 applications would be received and 14,000 would be successful. That was when the Howard government extended to small businesses a definition where, I believe, 70 per cent of the income of the business was derived from agricultural activity. So today I ask the minister: does he know how many applications were actually received? I ask the parliamentary secretary responsible for the carriage of this bill in the chamber now: does she know how many applications were actually received? At a time when the Howard government was expressing the sincere belief that 17,500 applications would be received, only 450 actually were.

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