Joanna Gash (Gilmore, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House:

(1)

notes the contribution of small business to regional economies;

(2)

acknowledges that small, micro businesses employ many people and are worthy of protection against predatory behaviour by conglomerates, including organised trade unions;

(3)

acknowledges the role small, family-owned businesses play in creating employment opportunities in smaller communities;

(4)

recognises the disadvantages faced by small business operators in competing against major chains in regional areas; and

(5)

calls on the Government to take all steps necessary to ensure that small business in Australia remains viable in the face of the many threats confronting small business operators.

In New South Wales small business is doing it tough. By small business, I mean those micro businesses that are run and operated almost exclusively by family members. In regional and rural areas like the electorate of Gilmore these businesses provide a significant level of employment opportunities, whether they hire employees or people are self-employed—businesses like corner shops, plumbers, builders, service industries associated with tourism, cleaning contractors and a host of other activities that the big companies do not touch. They are there because the market catchment of rural and regional areas is far too small to attract the big operators but, when they do arrive, they have the capacity to devastate the small business sector simply through their sheer commercial power. The small businesses simply cannot compete and, over a long period of time, they eventually wither and die.

I am very concerned at the concentration of market advantage that these large conglomerates exercise and their effect on local communities. Not only do they have a huge commercial advantage, but their capacity to purchase huge volumes of commodities at a significantly lower wholesale price means they can sell the products far cheaper. They have the advantage of sinking bucket loads of money into advertising and influencing consumer behaviour. On a volume-to-volume basis, small business is out of the race, and its profit margins reflect that. Small business is disadvantaged in the negotiation of fair rents and basically has to accept what is on offer—again, a cost that comes straight off the bottom line. These businesses deserve protection against unfair, unequal, predatory practices and I do not believe sufficient is being done in that regard. The ACCC needs to be given more power to act and expose these big businesses that are colluding at the expense of small businesses. I include the oil companies in that statement.

The Trade Practices Act prevents any business from gaining an advantage over its competitors by engaging in unconscionable conduct or through anticompetitive practices. The government’s recent strengthening of the TPA allows small businesses to compete more effectively with large business. The amendments to section 46 will allow the courts clearer scope to determine misuse of market power, including predatory pricing by large business. But I do not believe that the New South Wales government is doing enough to stimulate rural and regional economies, preferring, it seems, to focus on Newcastle, Sydney and Wollongong—the primary political base of the ALP. New South Wales barely avoided sliding into a technical recession in the December quarter. In the December quarter just gone the growth rate of New South Wales was half that of the national average. The headline of an article in the Sydney Morning Herald on Friday, 18 May 2007 about the New South Wales government said it all: ‘After fifty days, still stuck in first gear’. The article states:

The overwhelming feeling in the business sector is that there is a lack of urgency to address many problems facing the state at a time of the electoral cycle when it is possible to make decisions.

The greatest urgency for the New South Wales government is to stimulate a bleeding economy, but very little is being done. They just do not care, and the evidence for that is a collapse of the building industry, which takes all those businesses that rely on it downstream. I am reliably informed that an indicator of retail health is radio advertising which, according to the Financial Review, has plummeted in New South Wales. That is because business cannot afford the cost of advertising in the light of falling profit margins. Who feels that the most? It is the mum and dad businesses that are the backbone of our communities, like those in my electorate of Gilmore.

It is the role of government to stimulate business activity through fiscal and monetary policy. There is no doubt that the federal government has played its role because we have a buoyant national economy and things could not be better overall. But bring the magnifying glass down to places like Nowra, Ulladulla and Bateman’s Bay, which are regional centres in Gilmore, and an entirely different picture emerges. The ALP have been vigorous in protecting union jobs, but they do not care about the major creator of jobs in rural and regional areas and those who employ themselves. We in government need to recognise the significance of the small business sector and their role in the community. We need to take urgent and responsible steps to protect small business from intimidation by big business, big union and big government. Without due protection, they are the real underdogs.

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