Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

I do feel I am in a bit of a time warp. Be assured I am not going to do a jig in front of you, Mr Deputy Speaker—I think the red in the other place does interfere with people's brain cells at times—but we are in an amazing situation where we on this side of the House, the Labor government, are mandating and putting forward a market based mechanism and those on the other side are objecting to it. I really do feel like I have been sucked into some vortex where this is just weird and people have not really got their heads around it.

This is a market based mechanism, something that businesses across Australia are really good at dealing with. They are dealing with adapting to change and adapting to things that are not certain. Every day in business there is uncertainty. Interest rates go up and down. The biggest uncertainty for most businesses at the moment—small, large, but particularly trade exposed businesses—is the current cost of the Australian dollar. I do not hear any talking on the other side about the current price of the Australian dollar having an impact upon businesses, but our businesses have adapted to that and changed. Indeed, the other side of the House today voted down a bill that would help those businesses currently exposed to the cost impacts and fluctuations of the Australian dollar. They voted down the steel plan, a plan that we are putting in place at this moment, drawing forward money because we have realised that businesses—and these are very large businesses; I will get to small businesses in a moment—are being exposed to very big changes and uncertainties.

The joy for businesses today is certainty: they now know what is coming. They now know what is in the bills and they can plan for the future. The thing for small business is that they really do not have a worry because it will not impact them—unlike when the GST came along and every small business had to become a tax collector, had to understand a BAS form and when it had to go in and out, had to go out and find an accountant because the bookkeepers they were using were no longer eligible to provide the services to them. They had to go out and discover that, to get computer programs and do MYOB, and they are still doing that today. The greatest impost on time and management of small business is complying with the BAS statement for GST.

There will be no paperwork for small businesses under a carbon price. There will be no accounting requirements. They will not have to ascertain what their electricity prices are. They will have to do nothing. If they choose to go and seek compensation or be part of the packages that are out there, they will have to do things.

An incident having occurred in the gallery—

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