Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome this debate on the matter of public importance relating to small business and interest rates. It is an important matter. I must pass judgment: I thought that the shadow minister’s contribution was low on energy. His predecessor was more energetic when he did get around to asking a question, as rarely as that was. Indeed, in the short time that the shadow minister has been in the shadow small business portfolio, his main contribution occurred at the dry-cleaning shop when his leader was talking about the fact that, in his world, housewives do the ironing. The contribution of the shadow small business minister was to correct him twice and say, ‘And house husbands,’ ‘And house husbands.’

But we have heard a debate here and a contribution from the shadow minister that lasted 15 minutes. I was ready and waiting for the one policy idea in relation to small business from a coalition who have been in opposition now for two years. His predecessor and the former opposition leader did actually have a webpage—I suppose that is a start—and they had five ideas. I do not know what happened to those, because we have witnessed the demise of both the shadow small business minister and the Leader of the Opposition. But at least, I suppose, there was some sort of effort to pretend that there was an idea—but none today.

As for a Senate inquiry, I think a Senate inquiry is fine. I would like to support a Senate inquiry. But let’s not get carried away and think that a Senate inquiry will fix all the problems of small business financing in this country. If that is what the coalition is asserting its policy is in an election year—a Senate inquiry—the people will make a judgment about that, I guess, but I think there would be an expectation of more policy than that.

I want to take the opportunity to thank the small business community of Australia for the work that they do, for the risk-taking in which they engage. There is not a lot of gratitude around the place for the contribution that small businesses make with that entrepreneurship, that risk-taking and the sense that they go out on their own and feel on their own. But of course the Rudd government has that gratitude. We always have. We did in opposition and we have it now.

There is a particularly magnificent contribution that small business has made in the last couple of years, and that happened in the midst of the worst global recession since the Great Depression here in Australia, when people were very worried and I know small businesses were very worried about their prospects. What did they do? They said to their staff: ‘We’ve got problems here but we don’t want to let you go. We value the contribution that you make to this business.’ Yes, there were reductions in hours, and even to this day employees in small businesses might be working fewer hours than they would like. Nevertheless, it was an important social contribution that small business owners tried not to let their staff go, because they remembered the value of good staff and the value of good staff during the recovery phase. So thank you to the small business community. Thank you for what you have done, and be assured that this government will continue to work shoulder to shoulder with you as we work our way into the recovery phase. But we do have a long way to go yet.

With respect to access to finance, what has the government done? We have in fact convened those roundtable meetings. They were very useful. We followed up with individual meetings between business associations and the major banks, including the Australian Bankers Association. I went to Cairns just before Christmas, where we had another very important discussion. We have set up a small business credit complaints line. We have set up a small business support line. I can advise the House that the response to that support line has really been first-rate. There has been a lot of interest and a lot of good work going on there. We will continue to support small business through the advisory services and the 36 business enterprise centres that for the first time the Commonwealth of Australia is funding. At no point during the 11 or so years of the Howard government did any continual Commonwealth funding flow to those business enterprise centres. They are very grateful for the funding they will receive.

When this global financial crisis hit and then we moved into a deep global recession, what did the government do? It supported our small businesses and tradies—a point I was trying to quietly make during question time. Business has been very grateful for that support. The shadow minister was talking about various surveys that have come out. The Sensis Business Index small and medium enterprises survey stated that small businesses are remaining strongly supportive of the economic stimulus package. Just this week the Australian Industry Group’s Associate Director of Public Policy, Dr Peter Burn, commented on results for construction, saying:

The improved conditions in January coincided with the reporting of increased tendering opportunities, new contract wins and a further uptake of work stemming from the federal government’s infrastructure stimulus programmes.

Hear, hear! Here we have small business organisations, one after the other, backing the stimulus package, backing it to this day, not just saying, ‘Oh, thanks, you did some good things last year’ but right now saying how important it is. The view of the Leader of the Opposition was, ‘It was not the stimulus package or the spending that saved Australia.’ The opposition have continually indicated that they would abandon the biggest school modernisation program in Australia’s history. That would threaten the livelihoods of small businesses and tradies right around Australia. There is this quaint idea that the Liberal Party is the party of small business when in fact it is the party of betrayal of small businesses. In their hour of need, when those small businesses were desperately worried and looking for some support from the Commonwealth government, what did the opposition say? ‘Let the market take its course. Let’s just see what happens.’ Two hundred thousand Australians would have lost their jobs were it not for that stimulus package. Instead, 112,000 jobs have been created in this country when most other countries have been in a recession in the last year, and many of the people in those 112,000 jobs would be employed in Australian small businesses. Many of those would be the tradespeople who turned to the Commonwealth in their hour of need, who turned to the Rudd government and got a response, a response through the stimulus package—and we have the Leader of the Opposition on the first anniversary of the second stimulus package saying, ‘It was nothing to do with the stimulus package.’

In a further big risk to the Australian economy and small businesses, what did the opposition leader float in the Sydney Morning Herald just a couple of days ago—a six-month paid parental leave scheme. Where is the money coming from for that? On the Alan Jones program he referred to his book, Battlelinesa little bit of book promotion. The book says, ‘It could be funded through a small general levy. Small business would instinctively regard any extra cost as unfair.’ As I said, you bet your sweet bippy, because these businesses cannot afford a new slug to fund a six-month paid parental leave scheme. That is just another example of the fiscal recklessness and riskiness of the Leader of the Opposition and his sidekick, the shadow finance minister. Shadow? He has completely overshadowed the shadow Treasurer, and the shadow Treasurer is a big guy. The shadow Treasurer is desperately trying to find a bit of space, a bit of oxygen. His only job is to go out and try to clean up the mess made by Senator Joyce, the shadow finance minister.

I note today that when the Leader of the Opposition was given the opportunity to repudiate the risky and reckless comments of the shadow finance minister he would not do so. To his credit the shadow Treasurer said: ‘It’s my job again today. What is today? It is a day ending in A-Y. I will have to go and clean up Senator Joyce’s mess.’ There they were in Queanbeyan today and there was an opportunity for the Leader of the Opposition to simply say, ‘I don’t agree with Senator Joyce and this should not have happened.’ But instead he said, ‘I’m keeping him; I’m keeping the team right through to the next election no matter what Senator Joyce says.’ This is the fact of the matter: he is in on the caper. The opposition leader is in on the caper. These are not just shooting from the lip remarks by Senator Joyce. They are perfectly well choreographed. The opposition leader says to him: ‘You go out and make some outrageous remarks to try to get the issue of public debt on the agenda. We will send out the poor old hapless tutu-wearing shadow Treasurer to go and clean up the mess’—so poor old Joe has to do that—‘but I won’t repudiate you, mate, because you and I know what the caper is,’ and the caper is saying the most outrageous and risky comments, which have in fact been reported by Reuters and other international organisations and wire services, because they do go around the world.

I was talking with Senator Brandis on radio today and he said, ‘Senator Joyce said it does not really matter; you’re saying it’s reverberating around the world.’ Do they take themselves seriously or not? This is the alternative finance minister of Australia making these reckless comments. Where was the shadow small business minister? Did he go around to Senator Joyce’s office and say, ‘Well, hold on, this is a problem, because this can make people very worried and this recklessness, this risk, does have implications down the track for small business interest rates’? When an alternative finance minister, a senior economic shadow minister, is prepared to go and say that Australia is at risk of defaulting on its loans, that the United States is at risk of defaulting on its loans, what sort of economic environment does that create in this country in terms of perceptions of sovereign risk? It is the height of recklessness, the height of irresponsibility. And make no mistake that the Leader of the Opposition is in on the caper. He sends him out with the assurance that he will not repudiate the comments of Senator Joyce. But poor old Joe will get the knock on the door and be told, ‘Go and clean it up and then we can say, “Well, you know, it was just a little bit of loose lips again from Senator Joyce.”‘

The opposition is a big risk for the Australian economy and a big risk for small businesses. Just in the last week, a $10 billion climate change con job has been unveiled by the coalition. When Senator Joyce was asked at the National Press Club where the funding would come from, he referred to the tax system and he said, ‘That’s the whole thing where we’re going to get the money.’ They are going to get the money out of the tax system. What do you reckon small business will think about that? Higher taxes on small business. We know who are the champion taxers in Australian history, the gold medal taxers in Australian history, the bobsleigh champions of Australian history and the highest taxing government in Australian history.

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