Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I hear them interjecting already. They cannot help themselves. They like to talk a lot about small business. They see themselves as the crucible, the saviours and the bastion of all things small business, but why is it always Labor governments that actually have to do the hard yards and the work? We are not afraid to take that on. We were not afraid to put forward the 30 per cent tax break and now the 50 per cent tax break. We are not afraid to take on red tape and bureaucracy to make life easier for small business. So while the Liberal and National parties merely talk about how much they support small and medium enterprises, we actually deliver. That is a key point to be made. It always comes back to us. For the decade that they were there, these are things they could have been done. What was preventing them?

I would challenge any small business owner, next time they see their member of parliament, of any creed, to ask, ‘What did happen in the previous decade?’ The GST. What happened? They got slugged with another tax. Importantly, what we have done by ensuring that we have the 30 per cent and 50 per cent tax concessions in place is encourage small business to maintain jobs and to spend money on critical pieces of equipment, making sure that we continue to grow and develop our economy. With 1.9 million small businesses across the country employing more than 3.8 million Australians, the government does recognise how important it is to support them. We recognise not only small businesses but also workers. We recognise the integral relationship they have in building and creating the wealth. We are not of the view of the previous government in thinking that they were the only ones who created anything in this country rather than small business themselves. By increasing those tax breaks, we have gone a fair way in demonstrating that.

Of course it is not the only thing we have done. We are looking at unemployment. We talked in opposition about skilling people and the skills shortage and now is the time to, as they say, make hay while the sun shines. What we need to do is ensure that we continue to up-skill people and train people when times are tough so that they will have the skills that are necessary when the economy turns around. We are committed to protecting the jobs of Australians during these tough times.

One of my favourite topics, and one that members of parliament may or may not be sick of hearing me talk about, is that of infrastructure. I cannot talk about it enough because I see it as such a critical piece of government policy that no-one else can deliver. The big infrastructure projects really are left to government to deliver. It is one of the largest areas of neglect that the previous government took upon itself to turn a blind eye to. It just left it to others to do.

They talk about what is left for future generations. Well, back in 1996 it was not possible to determine exactly where we would be in 2007, 2008 and 2009 after almost 12 years of the Howard government. If only they had realised the damage they were doing to the economy by not investing in the future, by simply waiting for someone else to do it and by not taking those revenue rivers of gold that flowed into Canberra from the mining boom and the great times that this country had. By not investing those revenues in infrastructure, we forwent a great opportunity.

See this speech in context