Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is a debate focusing on small business, which is notable for the absence of the shadow minister for small business, who is not entering the debate. Not only will his own team not let him ask a question of the minister during the course of, I think, 510 days, but he cannot get a guernsey in the top three speakers on the other side in an MPI. It is time he hung up his badge and looked for a job somewhere else.

Indeed, watching the performance of the member for Casey in opening this discussion, I would say the same to him. The member for Casey was long renowned for his close relationship with the former Treasurer, the member for Higgins. I used to think that part of his job was to make the member for Higgins look a bit good. Now that the member for Higgins has gone and we see the member for Casey by himself, I have to say that the reflected glory was all the other way. The performance today was truly underwhelming. The member for Casey started by referring, thankfully, to the last budget, and that is where I want to start. I want to talk about what the small business community actually said about the last budget. I imagine that the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia is a group that those opposite take some heed of. COSBOA said that it welcomed the new initiatives that support small business in the budget and then listed a whole raft of things, including the small business tax break and the small business support line. It went on to say this about that $10 million venture:

The challenges that are now facing small businesses in this recessionary period are serious, and small businesses need the confidence to know that there is someone to turn to when things get tough. Having a dedicated first point of contact for enquiries ranging from problems with access to finance through to retail leasing issues will be an important service to small businesses.

That is what it said about that measure in the budget. It went on about other initiatives in the budget. It said of the small business online program that it was designed to help small businesses participate in the digital economy and enter the world of e-commerce. I would have thought that would have met with some approval from those opposite. It certainly met with approval from the small business community. COSBOA said:

Whether you’re a carpenter or a lawyer, a delicatessen or a pharmacy, more and more people use the internet every day to make their purchasing decisions. Government support for small businesses to enter the online world is very good news.

It knows it is very good news. That was an initiative taken in the last budget that clearly was of benefit to small business. The last one I will mention from its statement is the new R&D tax credits, a very important initiative, Minister. Congratulations to you and your colleagues in the cabinet for re-establishing a decent R&D tax credit which COSBOA acknowledged by saying:

The increased government support for small businesses and other firms who engage in R&D is back to where it should be.

Interesting words: ‘back to where it should be’. Not only did COSBOA think it was good that we did it but they reflected on the fact that for a decade R&D had been ignored and relegated to a third-rate issue by those opposite when they had management of the economy.

That was the budget. We then saw substantial packages to stimulate the economy through what has without doubt been the most stressful economic environment in the world for three-quarters of a century. I can remember going to one of the events in my electorate that was driven by the stimulus package. It was the opening of some new defence housing, part of an 800-house package of new defence houses. I remember talking to the contractors who were there. I can remember very clearly my conversations with the management and with the tradespeople. The management said that at the start of the year they were staring down an abyss. A major fall in the market confronted them. They were actually looking at laying off large numbers of their staff. When we as a government announced the initiatives in the stimulus package they decided to hang on in the hope that they might just be able to keep their valued staff on. Not only have they been able to keep their valued staff but they have expanded their staff. They were there doing great work building houses for the men and women of the Australian Defence Force at Upper Kedron, which are now occupied.

These are real jobs—real people in real jobs who then ensure, through the multiplier effect, through all the things they spend money on at the shops and in entertainment at theatres and other places, that other small businesses are able to maintain their operations. All these things are understood by small business contractors and the families who rely on them. It is understood by people around the world that stimulus packages of this kind were essential in addressing the threats that we collectively confronted as a global economy. But it is not understood, even today, by those opposite.

I am reminded of a meeting just this morning when members of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade met with an ambassador from one of the countries of Europe. The question came up about his country’s handling of the global financial crisis. He referred to the fact that in his country they had actually had to bail out one of the major banks. They had spent $60 billion to ensure the viability of just one bank because it was central to their economic activity. Every government in the world, every political party in the world, has understood that dynamic. It beggars belief that even now the Liberal Party, led by a merchant banker, cannot comprehend those fundamentals.

I want to make some reference to retail turnover as another indicator of what has been going on over the course of the last year as a result of this government’s stimulus packages. The Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy made some reference to this. If you go back to October, just before the crisis, you can see the downturn. Our growth in October in retail sales year on year was down to about two per cent. Historically that is comparatively low, if you look over the last four or five years. In November it had dropped to 1.7 per cent. We, like the rest of the world, were heading for that abyss. The government took very strong, clear, decisive action early on to prevent the worst of that affecting the Australian community. And it has shown up very dramatically in retail sales. In December, retail sales increased year on year by 5.7 per cent. Bear in mind that just a month earlier the increase was only 1.7 per cent. So in December it had jumped to 5.7 per cent, and that higher level of confidence in the retail sector has been maintained since: 6.2 per cent in January and 3.9 per cent in February when, I guess, people were paying off their Christmas credit card bills. It then picked up again in March to 6.1 per cent and has been maintained at around six per cent ever since. That is an enormous endorsement of this government’s strategy. And who does this involve in a real sense? It is not just Myer and David Jones and the big stores of the world. This is very much impacting the mums and dads and small businesses in every suburb of every city and in every town of Australia. Yet it has escaped the comprehension of those opposite.

You know, Mr Deputy Speaker, every now and then something comes along in this place and it is just too good to pass up. And when I saw the MPI here I thought, ‘I’ve got to have a piece of this!’ When someone walks along and pokes their chin out and says, ‘Here, hit me here,’ sometimes you just have to take up the offer. When member for Casey stood up and delivered his opening comments here, I thought, ‘Yep, this is the debate to be in.’ How absurd to stand up in this debate, as the member for Casey did and a couple of others will, to argue the point that somehow the government’s support of the economy, our support of the banking system, our support of the retail sector, our support of the construction sector—all of these things—were misguided, misplaced and we got it all wrong.

Reference has been made to the debt, and this of course has been the big-ticket item for those opposite. They think this is their political nirvana to get them out of jail. We do not have time to debate that here fully. I just want to make some reference to an article in August written by Ross Gittins, well known to all of us in this place, where he spoke about the debt and posed the question: ‘So, how worried should we be about that debt?’ He said:

Much less than Turnbull wants us to be. He is exaggerating the size of the debt, misrepresenting the cause of the debt, exaggerating the difficulty we’ll have repaying it, misrepresenting its effect on our prospects and pretending we’ll end up with little to show for it.

I commend the article to all members to read. It is an excellent article.

These are the simple facts, and the confusion of those opposite. The Liberals have said for the last year that they support our initiatives like building new buildings for every primary school, but they voted against that. They said they support the $950 back-to-school bonus that we gave to families at the start of the year, but they voted against that too. They said they support the $900 tax bonus and, yes, they voted against that. They said they supported the 800 defence houses and they voted against that. They said they support the 20,000 social houses and they voted against that. They said they support the rebate of $1,600 for ceiling insulation and they voted against that. And, indeed, they said they supported the $950 bonus for farmers devastated by drought and, would you believe it, even the cow cockies—(Time expired)

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