Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak to this MPI:

The adverse effects of Government policy on small businesses in Australia.

I would like to start by recognising and heralding all of those positive achievements that this government has made for small business! But I actually should start to address the real issue, and that is the issue of the negative policies that have impacted on small business. I have just heard from the Minister for Small Business how he is walking amongst small business, how he is listening. Minister, take the earmuffs off! If you took the earmuffs off you would hear what they were saying to you. You would hear of the record bankruptcies that are occurring. You would hear about the struggles that people are going through because of the lack of confidence driven by an incompetent Prime Minister with a Labor Party so focused on its internal fighting that it cannot be focused on the future of this nation. This government has undermined consumer confidence and it has undermined business confidence, and therefore we are seeing a reduction in investment because there is no confidence.

In fact, this is the government that said it would do a one for one: it would repeal the red tape and regulation that business goes through—in particular, the burden on small business. Since 2007 this government has introduced or amended 16,173 new regulations. It has repealed 79. I can understand why it does not understand small business, because it does not understand simple mathematics—

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