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

I thank my friend and colleague. What people will do is they will delay activity in those areas. You go and talk to any mechanic around Australia. Those scheduled services are not being done in quite the same way they were in the past. People are waiting till their car needs a repair before they go to the mechanic. You go and ask anybody who installs LPG, an investment that has a long-run benefit. But there is no need to do it right now—and people are simply not doing it. This government has created a hibernation climate for these small businesses, because the consumers they rely upon are anxious about their future, uncertain about the impact of a carbon tax and absolutely clear that you cannot trust the government about what they are saying the impact will be. So what does the dry-cleaner do? He does not get to see the customer quite so often. If people can put off that extra visit to the dry-cleaner, they will. If there is some other way—a hand wash perhaps, for a cardigan or a vest—they will use that, but they will not go to the dry-cleaners.

This is happening right across our economy. This is why the small business community need a government that partners with them rather than punishes them. This is why we need the small business minister and ministers with responsibility for policies that have a profound impact on the viability and the future of small businesses to give a damn about what is happening in the small business community. They are copping it every which way from this government, and this is undermining employment in small businesses and it is undermining the very viability of those small businesses.

You might hear the government say: 'We're going to give this little bit of help to this particular big industry.' Why? It is a big industry, it has got the ear of the big government, and the big unions are in there cheering for it. Well, we are here to reaffirm our support for the small businesses that are not organised into unions, that do not have the ear of this government. They can count on the coalition to partner with them in terms of their prosperity and their opportunities into the future.

Let us have a look at what is actually playing out here. You will probably hear from those opposite: 'We've got all these compensation plans. It will all be just fine. It will all be peachy. Just ignore everything that is said by anybody who runs a business. Just ignore all of the analysis that's done. Ignore all the research and ignore all the impact work that's been done'—the research the government should have done but could not be bothered getting off its backside to do.

You stand condemned for your indifference to the impact of your policies on the men and women in small business who are the backbone of our economy. They know what you know. They know that you do not care. They are not looking for you to do anything for them, because that would be the first time. What they are hoping for is a chance at their future, a chance not to get this dagger in their heart of a carbon tax that is a ridiculously implemented proposition that is nothing like anything else that is going on in the world and that will have a very profound impact on small businesses and family enterprises. They cannot rock up to their suppliers and say: 'Hey, I'm a big business. If you want to keep working with me, you just go and absorb that cost.' They do not have that market power. They cannot go to their energy company and say: 'You want to put your prices up by 10 per cent? No, no. I don't think we'll cop that, because we're a big business.' They cannot do that.

So often, small business are price takers. So often, what they can afford to charge depends on what the import alternative might be. So often, they are at the pointy end of that difficult conversation between a consumer and someone providing the goods and services who has to say: 'This will cost this much.' They have to look in the eyes of those anxious consumers, who are uncertain about the competence of this government and wary about having confidence in the economy when the government cannot seem to manage its own affairs, let alone those of the nation. They have to be there when the decision is made: 'Maybe I'll just put that off.'

They cannot run off to somebody and say, 'Gee, business is a bit grim. Oh, well, we'll just work a little bit slower. There's always scope that the boss will throw in more money.' They are the boss. They are the last person to be paid. They are the ones who come in on the weekend, looking for those opportunities. They are the ones who turn up for this nation. They drive innovation in this country. They create wealth and opportunity, and this Gillard government does not give a hoot about them.

I am interested to hear what the Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency has got to say. He was at a business conference in the Isaacs electorate with SEMMA. He visited them and tried to explain the carbon tax. When someone explained the punishing impact of the carbon tax on their energy-intensive business, he just dismissed it: 'Oh, that's not much money. It might make you broke, but that's tough. That's a bad choice for the business.' This is a bad government. (Time expired)

See this speech in context