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

No, I did not say there aren’t any. I never once said that there aren’t any. The fact is that you could be a business that has actually had a revenue increase. There will not be many, but there will be some. You could have had a revenue increase, yet you are going to get a 20 per cent deduction from the tax office. If they pay that amount from the tax office at a 20 per cent deduction, and the margin of error compared with their final return is out by more than 15 per cent, what happens? They are going to get whacked with a penalty from the tax office. That is why this Labor Party policy is a very inferior policy to the coalition’s policy.

I have got to say that the minister at the table, the Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy, knows that to be true. He knows that there are going to be small businesses out there that are potentially going to get whacked with a penalty from the tax office as a result of Labor’s policy. That is why the minister has got his head down. He knows that this policy is inferior to the policy that the coalition put forward. He knows that there will be small business men and women in this country who, as a direct result of this flawed policy, are going to get whacked with penalties from the tax office.

Instead of adopting the coalition’s policy, which would have been a far superior policy for small business and would have enabled the small business owner, who knows their business best, to make an educated guess about what they wanted to do—‘Do we want to reduce our PAYG instalments by 10 per cent, 20 per cent, 30 per cent or maybe even increase them?’—the government, in typical Labor Party fashion, has said: ‘No. One size fits all. You’re all going to get a 20 per cent reduction on your PAYG instalment.’ And there is a little asterisk at the end of that which says that if the margin of error is more than 15 per cent when it comes to the final payment, it is bad luck. The small business owner is going to get whacked around the head by the ATO and have to pay a penalty. That is what Labor just does not understand about small business. That is what Labor just does not get about small business. At the end of the day, we have a group of people sitting on that side of the chamber and the closest they have come to small business is to walk into a small business and buy themselves a coffee. That is the problem. My concern is that they are so out of touch with the actual needs of small business that they are just getting it wrong when it comes to small business policy.

I note that the member for Lindsay and others in this debate have spoken about Labor’s 30 per cent investment allowance. Again, on the face of it, it seems reasonable. You would probably accept Labor’s investment allowance if there were nothing else offered, and unfortunately that is currently the situation from the Labor Party. But Labor fails to understand that you have got to have a dollar to spend a dollar. There is no point having a 30 per cent investment allowance if you are in small business and you are struggling with cash flow and do not have any money to spend. There is no point providing them with a 30 per cent allowance when they do not even have a dollar to spend because they are under cash flow stress. If there is one clear and consistent message that small business is delivering time and time again, it is: ‘We have cash flow stress at the moment. The best thing you can do is to free up our cash flow.’ You do not free up cash flow by providing an incentive to small business and saying to them, ‘Spend more money and you will get 30 per cent back.’ It is great if you happen to be one of those fortunate businesses that are awash with cash and can invest more money. But if you are one of those businesses that does not have a need to purchase plant and equipment, if you are one of those businesses that is faced with a cash flow situation that does not free up cash to invest in new plant and equipment, it does nothing for you. Labor just does not understand that. That is why the coalition’s proposal is far superior.

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