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

What a revelation we have just had. You must really feel for the hundreds of thousands of Australians that are worried about their jobs and the households worrying about how they are going to pay for the increased cost of everything when they get what is nothing more than a rant. This is supposed to be a matter of public importance about the impact of Labor’s carbon tax on jobs. Did we hear a word about that from the melodious member who just spoke? No. We heard lots of volume but no content, a completely vacuous contribution about something that goes to the heart of the living standards and the opportunity for people in this country to secure a livelihood through employment, and the reckless way in which the government, to hang onto power, is pandering to a Greens agenda to introduce a carbon tax it cannot explain, an impact it does not understand, consequences for households it cannot even articulate, and a concern of business and for employment it does not even bother to talk about. What is going on here? We have heard all of these stories from those opposite and a complete inability to address what is going to be one of the most fundamental impacts on people’s existence in this country, and they cannot even bring themselves to talk about it.

This is a tax that does not just land once. This carbon tax will land over and over and over and over again on every stage of production, on every part of activity, on every element of what is consumed in this country and then, on top of that, there will be a GST. The consequences of that are clear. This carbon tax risks visiting carnage on small businesses across this country.

And do you know what is most concerning? The small business community have had to sit by and listen to Labor talk about how clever they are while 300,000 jobs have been lost in small business since the election of Labor. If that atrophy within small business and the economic strength that small business brings to the economy is not enough, those people in small business have to cope with this apathy, this indifference, this complete disinterest in what should be the engine room of our economy. When the Howard government was last in office, 53 per cent of Australians in the private sector got their job in small business. It is now down to 48 per cent and diminishing—300,000 fewer jobs—and here we have a poorly conceived plan and a change that the government cannot even articulate.

It comes in here with a couple of agreed bullet points that have been workshopped with the Greens, and then argues that it is some blueprint for enormous reform within the Australian economy. When we ask about consequences, we get no answers. When we ask about the level of the tax, we get no answers. We ask about the compensation package and we get no answers. And the small business community gets no interest. They are never mentioned. They are not involved even in these workshopped slogans that masquerade as some kind of considered argument about a carbon tax. They do not even crack it for a mention. It is as though the small business community does not matter.

It is the same dismissive, disinterested attitude we got under Prime Minister Rudd’s CPRS. Everyone was queuing up for compensation, and you know who got none? Small business. And what were they told? Suck it up! Suck up the extra costs or pass them on to consumers. That is what the small business community was told. This again illustrates how this Labor government does not understand what is going on in the economy. It comes in here and boasts about growth at the big end of town and in big mining and big minerals, but it does not see the harm and the hardship its policies are causing small businesses right across this country. If this economy is patchwork, it is threadbare for the small business community. There are no sloppy margins. There are no easy profits. There is no optimism that the government is even remotely interested in their circumstances or the tens of thousands of people in every community around the country who get their employment in small business.

What have we got here? A carbon tax that is going to hit every stage of every piece of activity of every part of production on every input because cost of living pressures in the household represent cost input pressures in business and they just cannot pass them on. They cannot pass them on because Australian consumers are anxious, nervous and frightened about what is going to come next from this government. They are looking for bargains. They are worrying about balancing their own books. They have got rising costs everywhere they turn and they are also concerned about the impact of this carbon tax on their jobs, their livelihood, let alone their ability to balance their own budgets.

They are not mirroring this government that does not seem to care about paying its way. Households do care, they live within their means; they have to. But small businesses do not have these great, sloppy profit margins to be able to say, ‘Suck up this extra charge.’ This is a charge that will go on and on building at every stage of activity. Wherever there is energy consumed, wherever there is fuel being used, this carbon tax will be embedded in those input costs and they will cascade through and snowball, and add to the cost of those goods and services, and then the government gets a large lick at the end of the day from larger GST revenue. They just love it. Do you think that this government cares? Of course they do not. They could not bring themselves to talk about this very issue.

The surveys are quite interesting. There have been some surveys out there where having heard the Prime Minister say, ‘There will not be a carbon tax under the government I lead’—you know small business people, they take people as they find them—they thought, ‘The Prime Minister of this country said that, we might be able to believe it.’ Do you know, 80 per cent of small businesses in a recent survey said they had made no provision for a carbon tax because they took the Prime Minister at her word? Such is the democratic deficit we now face today. They are now thinking: ‘What is this? Is this Guatemala or something where these undertakings from civic leaders just do not count?’ You are going to run your own show and when things get tough, you just tell everybody, ‘You’re happy, you’re happy, this will be good for you.’ Everyone will go, ‘Yes, that’s right, is it, Leader?’ It does not work like that in Australia. If political parties make commitments, they should stick to them—that is what honourable people do.

There is little wonder as you travel around this country that you see the nation’s leading cartoonists have familiar themes. You have the Prime Minister sitting there as Bob Brown’s puppet and the Prime Minister interestingly is characterised as Pinocchio. You know what is really interesting, though? Where would Geppetto be? Would Geppetto be manufacturing these Pinocchio puppets in Australia? No, he would be pushed offshore. If he were manufacturing these Pinocchio-like puppets mimicking our Prime Minister, he would have to go offshore because all of the energy costs would be embedded, all the costs of getting the timber to his workshop would have carbon tax loaded into every part of that transport task. The energy that he would use, even the machinery that he would use, would have your carbon tax in there, so he would be buying in these puppets from offshore. I wonder what the likeness would be like.

Is that what is really going on here? Is manufacturing so non-bourgeois that you do not want it in this country? Why on earth would you burden our competitive industries that day after day have to be world class and take on competitors right around the globe with a carbon tax that builds up, snowballs and adds lead in the saddlebag every step of the way when their competitors do not have to worry about it? What a cunning plan not to have to worry about small business—wipe them out. When you ask this government to explain the impact on business, who do they revert to?

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