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

We have just heard quoted verbatim Labor caucus talking points on these issues but very little engaging with the subject that we are here to discuss today. This was about our economy’s ability to handle and to respond to natural disasters. This is about the way in which the Gillard-Rudd Labor governments have run down our nation’s capacity to have the resources to respond to these unexpected, although almost certain to arise, natural disasters that our vast nation faces.

This is what this is about, and you did not hear anything from the speakers about the mere fact that our capacity has been diminished, and that the government has now had to turn to a lazy new tax to prop up its response to these recent disasters. You did not hear anything about the 300,000 jobs that have been lost in small business over the last three years. They are quick to mention jobs growth, but you do not hear them talk about how 300,000 fewer Australians are now securing their livelihoods through employment in small business because small businesses are doing it tough.

These are small business people, not some distant enterprise, which the government seems to think they are. These are small business people—people who invest, take risks and provide opportunities for themselves, for their communities and for people to pursue their livelihoods. That capacity has been run down. Just as our fiscal capacity has eroded under this government, our capacity to work with the small business community to bounce back and support livelihoods has also been eroded.

And the government is continuing to do it. You have heard the shadow Treasurer talk about this government still borrowing $100 million a day to feed its spending binge. That spending binge and bad debt binge are also undermining our nation’s capacity to respond to and deal with natural disasters. The small business community struggle to get a hearing in that kind of debt environment, where the government is the gorilla in the room soaking up available resources to feed its spending spree.

We hear case after case, and we have heard some today. Even the Prime Minister herself has acknowledged that the package the government has put forward to support small business is not responding to the needs of many. But that is not the only problem we face. Small businesses are hurting, and they will hurt more as this nation responds to these natural disasters. They will hurt as the government crowds them out in their ability to access finance. They will hurt more as consumer confidence takes a hit from yet another tax at a time when they are struggling to balance their own budgets.

Households around Australia are adjusting their spending patterns to respond to the times, but this government will not. This government reaches into people’s pockets to pull out more tax to respond to this disaster when it is are not looking hard enough at its own budgets and spending priorities to respond to those needs. So what we are going to see is a nation that has been battered by natural disasters now having its confidence further eroded by bad policy-making and bad decision-making from this Gillard Labor government.

We have seen the reports about what is going to happen to our broader economy. The Reserve Bank has predicted a contraction of about half a per cent of GDP in 2010-11. Some people think that half a per cent is not much, but it is a very substantial amount of economic activity and it will hurt small business most. The small businesses are the ones that will hurt when consumers in this country hesitate to spend. It is the small businesses in our nation that will hurt most when people enter their enterprises demanding discounts and savings. There is one reason that the inflation rate is not higher than it is, and that is that small businesses have been absorbing cost pressures and consumer uncertainty in their margins. There are no sloppy profits around for small business. There are no easy sales. It is hard work. In the retail space the big guys, to maintain their turnover, have driven higher volume sales at lower margins, and small businesses are left to respond to that.

This disaster will see many of the inputs into small businesses become more expensive. But do you think small businesses will have the capacity to push up their prices? No. They will not be able to pass those increases on to customers. Customers are already wary about their own economic circumstances and economic future. They have already had their confidence damaged by some of the decision-making of this government, which has made it all the more difficult for those directly affected by the floods. This is a time when confidence is crucial, and the last thing a national government should do is take further action to undermine that confidence. But that is precisely what this government has done. Those with a capacity to contribute have voluntarily donated to the relief effort. But now those who are struggling to pay their mortgages after, I think, seven interest rate rises under this government are going to have to face paying more tax to a government that has shown itself to be incapable of being resourceful with the funds it already has.

We heard the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, the Leader of the National Party, outline the waste, the misuse and the abuse of taxpayer resources by this Labor government. And do you know what those people who are prepared to make a further contribution are anxious about? They are anxious about how the government will use it, because this government has got form in misusing and underutilising the resources it has available to it. Those who are struggling to meet the rising cost of basics—electricity, housing, food, water, transport, sending their kids to school and paying higher and higher internet charges while waiting for the real peak to come along when the NBN arrives—are the ones who are going to be wondering how they are going to find the extra money. And when they find that extra money, small businesses will not have that money coming through their front door, as it will be going into Treasury’s front door here in Canberra.

As we respond to this disaster, we need to reflect that we are responding off the back of a diminished capacity to respond because of successive decisions, waste and misuse of resources by this Labor government. And if the government has to resort to an extra tax to respond to this disaster, where is the capacity to respond to the next disaster going to come from? Indeed, if the estimates that the government has produced are not right, where are the extra resources going to come from? The government says it has the capacity to cut spending. Why not do that work now so Australian households and small businesses right across this country can see that the government is reordering its priorities and better utilising the resources available to it to live within its means, as everyone else is expected to do, and not go and touch up the taxpayer for a bit more dough coming through the front door?

This is on the back of the Treasurer’s dubious and, to quote the economists, highly risky mining tax—a mining tax that has written $7.4 billion into the budget. Economists rightly describe this as a highly risky revenue scheme. The mining tax has been botched once, reborn and put back on the table. There is uncertainty about its application and who will pay. It is uncertain in terms of the international commodity market and what revenue streams will come. If that is uncertain you can kind of understand why the Treasurer is uncertain about who is going to be receiving money from the government to support the rescue after these natural disasters and who will be expected to pay the flood tax. These guys just do not know what they are doing, Mr Deputy Prime Minister—

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