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

and most likely, Mars bars, sir—who knows? There is one thing that we can all agree upon: you do not know. You do not know, because the Rudd Labor government are so indifferent to the impact of these kinds of policies on the small business community that they do not even bother to check them out.

We saw this with the great big new tax, the CPRS. It was going to impact on every small business, everyone who introduced energy into their production process. Everyone was queuing up for compensation and the Rudd government had it covered. But who did they leave out? Small business. There was love being shared with compensation to soften the pain everywhere, except for the small-business community. And here we have it again. The Rudd Labor government just does not get small business. They just do not understand what it means. They do not understand the personal commitment and the sacrifice, the connections that the small-business community have with their operations and how they know that this tax—that Henry foreshadowed and then said should exclude dozens of minerals that this government has not excluded—is going to hurt communities and small businesses right across Australia.

What is clear is that this Rudd mining tax is a bad tax. It is bad for investment. It is bad for jobs. It is bad for small businesses. It is bad for consumers. It is bad for communities right across our continent. It is not just bad for big miners, it is bad for small quarries and family businesses extracting elements as a part of everyday life. There is one way to stop it—and that is to get behind the coalition. That is the only way you are going to stop this. The Rudd government has created an enormous budget black hole and it is trying desperately to fill it with a policy that it has not thought through. There are consequences it is indifferent to. All it wants is the cash to paper over its budget black hole. (Time expired)

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