Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, the Service Economy and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

What is extraordinary is that the members of the Labor Party stand there and sing this ongoing refrain and rhetoric about how inflation is at the highest level it has been. We hear the Australian Labor Party continuously make comments about inflation being at the highest level it has been for 16 years. There are lots of facts in this regard, and I would like to educate the small business minister and those opposite about this issue of inflation.

Inflation is tied directly to the economic capacity of the country. Inflation is tied directly to the economic strength and the growth of the country. And, thanks to the former coalition government, and the fact that it did more to drive economic growth, did more to drive the utilisation of capacity, did more to drive unemployment down, did more to drive investment in business and did more to drive an overall increase in consumer growth, those things actually resulted in a strong economy that was the envy of the world.

What do we know about the Australian Labor Party? We know that their attempt to reduce inflation will not be to actually do something constructive but will be to slow down the Australian economy to such a point that Australians are thrown on the unemployment scrapheap. That is what we know about Labor Party policy when it comes to inflation. They have no real ability to tackle the problem through increasing capacity, but rather only an ability to tackle the problem by making sure that they throw Australians back on the scrapheap.

What is also clear about Labor Party policy is that there will be a very negative and ongoing consequence for some time, because this is just the beginning when it comes to a lack of consumer confidence. When the coalition lost office in November last year, the small business sector had an attitude towards the government that found that, on the whole, there was a net positive. A net positive number of small businesses felt that the federal government’s policies were actually good for their business—in fact, a net positive of 29 per cent.

By May of this year, that net positive of 29 per cent had swung around by 53 per cent to being a net negative of 24 per cent. What does that mean? That means that more small businesses now believe that the federal government’s policies are bad for their business. You will not hear the minister talk about that. The minister will not address that issue. The minister will talk about international economic circumstances. The minister will talk about domestic circumstances. But the minister will not talk about one key fact, and that is that the Sensis small business index shows that when it comes to small business policies, the federal government’s policies are destroying small business. That is what is crystal clear from the Sensis small business index.

That is in stark contrast with the legacy that was left by the Howard government. As the small business policies of this new Labor government are rolled out, as small business owners are forced to deal with the by-product and unexpected ramifications of these ill-conceived, short-sighted and myopic federal Labor policies, we know that they will lay off workers. They will not take the risk. If you want to see a case in point, I draw your attention to the tourism industry. Very recently we saw in Australia’s key small business industry the arguments put forward by the Minister for Tourism on why the tourism industry was doing it tough—the high Aussie dollar, exceptionally competitive destinations and every other country in this region growing more rapidly than Australia. As a result we have seen airline capacity cuts because of decreased demand. We have seen a record high oil price, which has also meant that the airlines have been struggling with the increase in the fuel cost. What was the Rudd Labor government’s solution for an industry that is doing it very tough? They imposed $1 billion of new tourism taxes on an industry that the minister acknowledges is doing it particularly tough—and I am not surprised that the member for Leichhardt is not in the chamber. We know that the member for Leichhardt has a bit of a propensity to sneak off early. We know that he likes to scoot off early.

Most fundamentally it is time the Australian people looked the Rudd Labor government in the eye and asked, ‘When an industry is down on its knees, when an industry is doing it tough with record high fuel prices, when an industry is struggling under the weight of a high Aussie dollar, how can a Labor government possibly say, ‘Here is $1 billion of new tourism taxes and we are here to help’? Kevin is not ‘from Queensland and here to help’; Kevin is from Queensland and here to impose $1 billion worth of new taxes—

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