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

We saw this morning the spectacle of a government and its Labor members applauding what they have done to diminish democracy in Australia and to damage the viability of small businesses right across our continent. Rather than be circumspect about having told the Australian electorate one thing only to act in a completely contradictory way, rather than be reflective on what that would mean for the millions of people employed in small business across Australia, they cheered themselves. They cheered themselves while they took the wind out of the optimism and opportunities that small business provides right across the Australian continent. And we heard today during question time that there is not one dollar of compensation for small business in these 19 carbon tax bills. We heard the Prime Minister try to justify that by saying: 'We're spraying around compensation and carve-outs everywhere else; small business will just have to get by. They'll have to suck it up or pass it on to their consumers.' This reflects the ongoing neglect and disinterest of this Labor government in the impact of their policies and actions on the engine room of the Australian economy.

You could be forgiven for thinking that this Gillard government tries to take a cylinder out of that engine room every time it gets to a cabinet position, every time a decision needs to be made, every time a choice about policy settings needs to be determined. And you do not have to take my word for it. All you have to do is travel to any business community around Australia, and the one thing that small businesses and family enterprises know is this government is not on their side. They know this, and you get an example of why that is the case just from the discussion that we had earlier here just after question time.

You heard the Leader of the House boasting that 20 per cent of all the legislation passed by the Howard government was transacted before lunchtime today by this Gillard government. What an odd boast to make. At a time when red tape and regulation is gumming up enterprise and opportunity in the small business community, you have this out-of-touch government and Leader of the House, who probably would not know a small business unless he fell over one, boasting about the regulatory impost of this government as if that is somehow a good thing.

He went on to quote Churchill as if that were some guiding light in his thinking. I will give the government and Leader of the House another quote from Churchill. It was Churchill who said 'that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.' That is what we are facing. That is what this government is doing. It comes in here and says these carbon tax bills will be good for prosperity in Australia. It will be good for job generation. If that is the case, why don't you amp it up even more? If it is such a positive influence on all of those things, why not double the carbon tax from its $23 starting point? Why not go berserk and triple it? If it is such a tonic for prosperity and job opportunities as this government seeks to claim, why not amp it up even more? They will not do that, because they know a couple of things. No-one will buy it, because the Australian public has been stooged already and are bitter and will not forgive this government for that deception. But they also have no case to make about a positive economic impact, particularly for the small business and family enterprise community.

We see this time and time again. It was reinforced again yesterday by independent research conducted on behalf of ACCI by the respected Castalia Strategic Advisors. They have done what the government refuses to do: actually analyse the impact of its carbon tax on small businesses and family enterprises in the real economy, in different sectors where small enterprises predominate. They have done the work the government refused to do, because the government has not done any in-depth analysis and has released no research on the impact of its carbon tax on business viability, on the cost structures that they need to contend with, on employment and economic prospects for the future or, importantly, on the competitiveness impact of this carbon tax on our small businesses that are facing a globalised economy. But Castalia have done that on behalf of ACCI. This is another condemnation of this government.

Remember how just prior to the announcement there was that ring-around between all the Labor backbenchers to tell them what Bob Brown and Prime Minister had agreed upon, and the backbenchers, who had gone to the election promising there would not be a carbon tax were being told what kind of carbon tax was now going to be foisted on this nation? Remember that occasion? Shortly after that, every Labor backbencher was given cameos—little breakdowns of the actual impact of the carbon tax on particular households—so they could go out and talk to people about how this impost and the harm and hardship that everyone else could see would somehow be washed over by these lolly words from the government on the basis of compensation and carve-out. You saw a government conduct research on individual households' impacts to advantage its own political interests. But did the government bother to do any analytical work on the impact of its carbon tax on small business and family enterprises right throughout the electorate? Of course not. They would not do that work, because they know that to carry out that work would bell the cat on all the misrepresentations about the impact of the carbon tax that have been so much a part of the Gillard government's advocacy of this carbon tax.

But Castalia have done it. They have done this work on behalf of ACCI. You know what ACCI was urging all members in the parliament yesterday? They said, 'Armed with this research, all parliamentarians should think again before burdening small business with the carbon tax'. They went on to talk about the impact of a 10 to 20 per cent reduction in profitability for energy-intensive SMEs over the first three years and had an enormous caution on the impact after that time. They made the point that the government makes much of the supposed certainty that its carbon tax will introduce, but then the government does not talk about how the price actually floats around after three years. Castalia have made that analysis. They have said:

Any rational investor in the SME sector considering business expansion will immediately factor in the expected prices under the flexible price trading. Very few investments have guaranteed pay-back times of less than 3 years …

because it is only with three years that there could be any suggestion of certainty—only three years over which time a small business could factor in the impact and the harm and hardship of this carbon tax in making a decision about whether or not to expand. They have gone on to say that beyond those three years there is no certainty whatsoever, that there is no capacity to organise your assessments of the impact of this carbon price and therefore you will be in no position to make any investment decision that stretches beyond five years. They then talk about this carbon tax, the world's biggest carbon tax, that will raise $9.3 billion in its first year. The government says, 'Well, it's just like Europe.' The European carbon tax raises $500 million a year. We have a carbon tax that is 18 times the size of the European system spread across 1/22nd of the population. So similar are they that each European pays a buck. We are at $400 a head in Australia, and this is supposed to be just like what is going on in Europe.

The assessment went on to point out that there are some other fundamental differences. It says that these countries—these are competitors with Australian SMEs—are where 80 per cent of our imports come from and that these are countries that do not have any direct price signal on carbon. They are the ones our small businesses are competing with. They make the point that in those countries—this is the 20 per cent of countries that we trade with—that might have something that looks like a policy on carbon 'those costs tend to be distributed across all sectors of their economy through government sponsored direct action initiatives, rather than concentrated on the SME sector as will be the case in Australia'.

They are making the powerful point that, no matter what this government and its ministers say, small and medium enterprises will be the ones paying for this carbon tax. They will be the ones that look through these 19 bills and know there is not a dollar in it for them in direct compensation. They will be the ones that will be burdened with cascading cost impacts wherever energy is used or any input that happens to have an energy component that will build at each stage of the production process, at every step in the service system in those longer supply chains that are very much a part of small business. They know at every stage along the way there will be a carbon tax clip on every transaction, compounding through to the end point where they then have to face their customers and say: 'Look, all these costs have gone through the roof. This carbon tax is hitting us at every stage of the way we organise our work and provide our goods and services. I'm afraid you're supposed to pay for that because you've been compensated on the basis of a 0.7 per cent increase in the CPI.' Time and time again, sector after sector is proving that that analysis is fiction, because it fails to take into account the compounding impact all the way through.

There was the absurdity of the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency standing up at the Press Club citing COSBOA evidence, as if it proved its point, misrepresenting the fact that COSBOA have gone back to this government time and time again asking, 'Will you do the analysis of the impact of the carbon tax on our membership?' They even sent material to Minister Combet saying 'Here are all the broad-brush costs that we face; can you please do the analysis?' Rather than do the analysis, do you know what the minister did? They took that input and said, 'Well, there's the answer.' COSBOA said, 'This is the input for you to do the calculation.' He stood up at the Press Club and said, 'There's the answer: no big impact, because you've told us so,' completely missing the point that the government had not done this analysis to work out the harm and the hardship of the carbon tax on small business.

It gets worse. The minister stood up and said that small business was overstating its concerns. This is the form of this Gillard government and its ministers: you have a spray at anybody who disagrees with you; you deride them because you do not happen to fall in line with the chorus of government nonsense. They had a go at small businesses raising legitimate concerns about the impact of the carbon tax on their costs, on their competitiveness, on their viability and on their opportunity to employ Australians. Do you know what the answer was from Minister Combet? I quote: 'A drycleaner is not competing against drycleaners in China.' He also said that drivers cannot get their cars serviced in India. What a nonsense. Does he not know the whole point of his carbon tax is to send a price signal—which is a nicer word than a cost increase—to reduce demand? The whole point of the government's plan is to make people want to buy less of the stuff, and they are already doing this. They are postponing their visits to the drycleaners. Talk to any mechanic around Australia and they will tell you that people are not getting their routine servicing done on their vehicles. They are putting that off, knowing that they have got to be able to balance their household budgets at a time of rocketing cost-of-living increases, yet there is more to come with a carbon tax that they are being told is only going to cost them beer money.

That kind of offence really upsets the small business community. It really says to them that this Gillard Labor government does not care, is not interested in their concerns and does not even value their contribution to the Australian economy. On top of that, they do not actually know what the impact is because the government has failed to get off its backside to do the work that any responsible and thoughtful government would actually do.

But it gets worse. This all compounds at a time when Australian consumers and businesses see confidence plummeting. Households know that the government cannot be trusted on this, because it has form. It has form on the basis of the statement, 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.' Here is one delivered by the Prime Minister in strict contradiction of the assurances she gave. What else can you believe? Can you believe these modest price imposts when the reality is staring you in the face and when all the analysis of people who know their businesses and their cost structures is that the carbon tax will compound. Do you believe them or do you believe the government?

Most people who listen to the government think, 'You can't really believe them on some of this stuff, because they have got form.' When people come out and point to actual facts, they are derided by this government. This is eroding business confidence at this time, making difficult trading conditions even worse. We have seen profitability fall because of a lack of confidence in the Gillard government. We have seen, at a time of sustained mismanagement by Labor, business confidence continuing to erode to points we have not seen other than during the GFC. Time and time again, people are saying it is because of things like the carbon tax. Eighty per cent of Australian small businesses took the Prime Minister at her word and have not factored a carbon tax into their business plans. They are now having to recover, to reshape, to recalibrate their work at a time when the government is completely disinterested in their contribution to the economy. There is also the impact of the carbon tax on their work.

But it gets worse. Look at modelling such as that which Deloitte did for the Victorian government. I will not go through the figures, but I am already hearing government ministers having a crack at Deloitte because they are not on the hymn book of Labor's nonsense about the carbon tax. Deloitte have done an analysis that is different from the Commonwealth government's. Labor's modelling assumes there is no impact on employment. The whole thing is based on the premise that 'the parameters used in the Commonwealth Treasury modelling assumes zero employment impacts with all labour adjustments occurring through wages'. That is code that Labor believe that if you are out of a job they will just drive down their wages and you will get another one. But we know that will not work. We know that the mobility that is needed is not available. We know that people cannot seamlessly be put out of work because of a poorly conceived, flawed and dishonest carbon tax and then pick up a job tomorrow. These are the facts, government ministers. These are the facts, government members. As you travel around your electorates and people see that you have benefited from an assurance about the carbon tax that proved not to be credible they will look at you and say: 'You stooged us once, sunshine. We're not going to let you do that again!' (Time expired)

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