Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Deregulation, Competition Policy and Sustainable Cities) Share this | Hansard source

What is interesting today and what every small business owner and operator will pick up from the member for Rankin’s contribution as the minister for small business is how little he actually has to say about small businesses. Today we are supposed to be discussing the government’s intention to introduce the Rudd great big tax on everything, its failed, friendless and flawed ETS, when families are under significant cost-of-living pressures. That was the topic for today, but instead the small business minister went and had a talk about the solar system. Well, the solar system he should be interested in is to talk about the constellation of small business operators and employees right around the country that are very concerned about the Rudd government’s ETS, great big tax on everything. Why are they concerned? In the Hansard of the Australian parliament you will not find the small business minister, as he scurries out of this place, speak one word in defence of this flawed and friendless ETS system. You will not find him speak one word about the nonexistent compensation for the small businesses affected by this great big tax on everything. It is appropriate that the small business minister leaves the chamber, again turning his back on the concerns of the small business community, who have time and time again asked Dr Emerson to give a hoot about the small business community and the punishing impact on energy prices and on input costs that will land on every small business around this country.

There is a memo for the Labor government here: small businesses are operated by families. They are getting cost pressures everywhere they turn from the Rudd Labor government. Small businesses operated by families, employing people with families, are worried about their economic future, about their personal financial security, about the viability of the small business enterprise that they are a part of and about their prospects to provide jobs—more than four million jobs in the 2½ million small businesses. That is what the small business community is worried about, but the small business minister has nothing to say about that. He talks about the solar system but there is a constellation of very concerned small businesses right around Australia just concerned that the ETS—the great big tax on everything—that the Rudd Labor government is intent on forcing through is going to undermine their business viability and their prospects for profitability into the future. Let us remember, though this might be news to the Labor Party, that a profitable small business is one that can employ people, that can engage in continuing to be a small business. There is a story in the small business community about what Labor’s approach to small businesses is. They have a plan: you take a big business and you wait for it to be crushed to be a small business. That is Labor’s support for small business. That is how they support small businesses.

So here today when we had an opportunity for Dr Emerson, the small business minister, to for once turn his mind to the concerns that are being raised over and over again by the small business community about the lack of compensation for the increase in energy costs and the compounding input cost increases that they going to be faced with, we hear nothing, absolutely nothing. The small business community has been pleading with the minister to stand up for them. Is it because he is out of cabinet that he has no influence, or is he indifferent or incapable of making the argument for the small business community?

I can assure the small business community that the opposition has made the argument for them. Our alternative direct action plan has been designed with small business interests front and centre so that they are relieved of the punishing increase in energy costs and input costs for every small business in Australia from Kevin Rudd’s great big tax on everything but that there are opportunities for them to benefit from the strategies and the plan that the coalition has put in place.

Why would Dr Emerson, the Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy, not want to talk about the impact of the CPRS on small business? Is it because he does not know because no analytical work has been undertaken on this? It could be. He has not spoken about any or provided any evidence of the impact, yet we have seen business group after business group and electricity industry experts provide an analysis, and it is grim. Is it because he has not even lifted a finger to make a case for the small business community? Quite possibly—at least he is consistent. Even in the most recent days, when he was trying to compare and contrast, he could not bring himself to talk about the absence of compensation for the small businesses that are going to be punished by Rudd’s ETS tax on everything that will push up energy prices and input costs.

For that very limited number of smaller businesses that may be entitled to get some temporary transitional assistance, do you know that they need to consume 300 megawatt hours of electricity to qualify and then they need to be in very narrowly defined sectors? Also, it is only for a couple of years at best if the budget provides for it, when a typical small business consumes about half that energy. It is designed to damage small business. I do not know how those geniuses in the Rudd Labor government could have done a better job of nobbling small businesses through some kind of action on climate change than by coming up with its flawed and friendless ETS, a tax on everything.

We can look at some of the examples, even of households. We have Peter Garrett, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, saying that 90 per cent of low-income households will receive certain amounts of compensation. They quote a number of 2.9 million households. According to the Electricity Supply Association of Australia, there are 9.4 million electricity resident account holders—householders that receive electricity. How do you get these numbers? How do you get these warm words of comfort about the number of people who will receive compensation and the specific number of households when 2.9 million leaves a whole lot of households out of the 9.4 million that actually have residential connections? Do the rest of them, 6½ million people, cop it in the neck? Is that what the Minister for Climate Change and Water, Penny Wong, and Minister Garrett are saying? It may well be, but they cannot explain that.

They also cannot explain why, despite concerns identified in the recent COSBOA and Telstra small business survey, 71 per cent of respondents said they were either very concerned or somewhat concerned about the Rudd government’s great big tax on everything. You can see why they are pleading for action by the Rudd government to address small business concerns. I have touched on how elusive compensation for these price inflationary impacts on energy costs and input costs can be, how you need to be in a very exclusive group to get anywhere near it if you happen to be a small business. Even in that measure they do not mention small business—it is about narrow sectors of the economy with certain amounts of electricity consumption. They have not turned their minds to the experience of the small business community. Today my friend and colleague Mr Hartsuyker asked the Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy about a very specific case in his electorate, a meat operation which is already experiencing considerable price pressures from electricity and about how further electricity price increases, as a result of Kevin Rudd’s great big tax, will cause this proprietor, Russell’s Prime Quality Meats of Coffs Harbour, to ‘cause me to shed staff and drive up the cost of meat’. He was making the point that he is already copping price increases for his electricity and that is causing great problems for his business. He then made the case that if it goes up any further there will be job implications, viability implications for his business, and there will be impacts on the cost of consumer goods for everybody else.

What response did we get from that? The derisory response from the small business minister was to tell my friend and colleague Mr Hartsuyker that he was asking ‘a stupid question’. It is not stupid to the people who strive to try and make a go of these businesses, something that the Rudd government seems not to understand. You could look at industry associations like the Australian Retailers Association pleading with the government to calculate what the genuine impact of its great big tax on everything will be on a basket of groceries. Here is an example where a meat producer is drawing a very direct connection, yet the government cannot explain the impact of its great big tax on everything, on a basic basket of goods and services. The ARA makes the case that claims that it is only going to be a 1.1 per cent increase are ‘misleading and ignore the increased costs of groceries’. It makes the point that this is a cascading tax on everything. It is not like the GST where if you pay tax on something you take it off and then it is applied to the final sale price. No, it is not like that—it just keeps building; it is a tax that just keeps giving to the government so they can churn money around and dole it out to their favoured sons and daughters in the Australian public for electoral purposes and purely motivated by electoral interests of the Labor government.

Who have they missed out? They have missed out the small business community. The small business community rightly condemns the Rudd Labor government. They want a small business minister that stands up for their interests, as occurred today in the Senate. I am pleased to advise this House that the Senate has agreed to the coalition’s proposal for an inquiry into small business—

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