Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

In question time yesterday he had no idea. This will be a kick in the guts to small business people. There are no exemptions for small business from the tax, even if their commercial properties were hit by the floods or cyclones. In a very telling exchange yesterday, the member for Brisbane noted that a small business in her electorate was flooded up to its ceiling, lost vital equipment, suffered $200,000 worth of damage and was out of business for two weeks but had to pay the tax. We asked the Prime Minister about it and her response was—and I ask members to listen to this:

On the question of payment of the levy, the exemptions for payment of the levy, because we are talking about personal income taxation, are being figured off the personal arrangements that we have under the Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements—that is, eligibility for the emergency money under the Australian government disaster relief payment and associated payments.

And, this is the point:

So the aim here in making those exemptions has been to exempt from paying the levy people who have been immediately impacted personally by natural disaster.

Impacted personally—as a product of the Labor machine, the Prime Minister does not understand that when you are a small business person your business absorbs your life. You are impacted personally. In fact, the response from the Prime Minister just demonstrates that the Labor Party has no concept of small business and how they are constantly propped up by family budgets to keep those businesses afloat.

All in all, this tax is an increased cost burden on the Australian people and the government should be doing everything it can to relieve cost burdens on the Australian people. This is not leadership; this is a lazy response from a lazy government. Its first response is always a tax. It is a shame that the Labor Party does not have robust policy debates within its cabinet, but the self-described zombies accept the lazy public policy efforts of the Prime Minister, whose policy record is a shambles on Medicare Gold, on cash for clunkers, on the citizens assembly and on the East Timor processing centre. This Prime Minister has no public policy feel. Her response is a tax. The government is incapable of showing any discipline when it comes to fiscal management. It cannot manage the money it already extracts from the Australian people. It will not be able to manage the tax it raises from this levy. The government should show some discipline. The government should not impose a tax on the Australian people. (Time expired)

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