Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

If ever there was a time to be grateful for a 20-minute time limit on speeches in this chamber, I think we just witnessed it. The Australian Labor Party have a great deal of gall coming into the chamber to speak about the Tax Laws Amendment (Small Business) Bill 2007. Speaker after speaker from the opposition benches walk into this chamber and tell the coalition about how Labor’s plans for small business are better than the coalition’s plans for small business, about how the Labor Party is more in touch with small business than the coalition and about how the Labor Party is not interested in tokenistic gestures but is actually interested in meaningful reform for small business. The amazing thing about it is that they stand there and do it with a straight face. It is no wonder that the member for Werriwa stuck so closely to his script. If he had ventured off, I dare say he would have broken that poker face and started smiling as he was professing his great love and great interest in small business.

The fact is that there is no greater enemy—and I used that word advisedly—of small businesses across Australia than the Australian Labor Party. The record of the Australian Labor Party, when it comes to small business, is abysmal. It was this government which, on 42 separate occasions, tried to remove the shackles of unfair dismissal for the small businesses across Australia, and on 42 separate occasions the Australian Labor Party voted against it. That was one of the biggest single initiatives, which has had a positive and beneficial impact on the small business sector, and the Australian Labor Party stood in its way each and every time. On 42 separate occasions they exercised the muscle that they used to have up in the Senate to prevent an initiative that was ultimately in the best interests of the small business sector. That is the Labor record, and that is why small business should be very afraid if that mob ever gets back into power.

We have started to see already the ambitions of the Australian Labor Party. I would be slightly concerned if the ambitions that Labor has with respect to small businesses in Australia were a function of the thinking of the Australian Labor Party, but I am more concerned because it is not a function of Labor Party thinking. The real puppet masters in the debate on small business are the unions across Australia. The Australian Labor Party is 100 per cent owned and controlled by the trade union movement in this country. Each of the people who sit on the opposition benches is accountable back to their respective union. Each of them is required to do the bidding of their respective union. That is the reason we see the Australian Labor Party floating the balloon of reducing the number of employees that a small business can have and remain exempt from unfair dismissal laws. That is the reason the Australian Labor Party is talking about reining those numbers back. It is the bidding of their trade union masters. And their job in this place, like puppets on a string, is to make sure that they carry out the will of their trade union masters. Australian small businesses recognise the direct threat that would flow to them if the Labor Party were elected.

I come from the Gold Coast, and I have said on many occasions that it is the small business capital of this country. On a per capita basis, no other part of Australia has a higher number of small businesses than the Gold Coast. It is a city of entrepreneurship. It is a city of wealth creators. It is a city of people willing to roll their sleeves up and give it a go. To every single one of them I say, ‘Congratulations for taking the initiative, for taking the risk and for chancing your arm to realise a better future.’ But there is something else I know about the small business sector. I have a wife who is intimately involved in small business. She has her own small business. I come from a family that has had a number of small businesses.

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