Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is better than steak knives, indeed, as my colleague the member for Blair rightly points out. The member for Dunkley has directed all this energy and effort this week—it has been a supreme performance. Why have we had it? It is because opposition members are trying to mask the reality. They keep going on about how we are all from the union movement and how all we do is support the union movement. Do you know what? I have no problems supporting the union movement and union members because they are working people. I have no problem doing that. We, through our actions in this place, help working people every day.

Those opposite dress themselves up as the friends of small business when in reality they are the biggest betrayers of small business. They are the ones who made every single small business a tax collector when they imposed the GST. They loaded up small businesses with all that paperwork, forcing them to bring in MYOBs and to fill out business activity statements. They burdened them. These great friends of small business now worry that everything will come to an end when we introduce a price on carbon for the top 500 businesses. We introduced initiatives such as providing an asset tax write-off to improve the cash flow of small businesses around the country. Name one government that in one move was able to improve the cash flow of businesses to the tune of $6,500. It never happened under those opposite. We are providing it.

A government member: Per asset.

Per asset, indeed. When we give business tax cuts, what do these people on the other side, parading themselves as the great friends of small business, do? They oppose it. Big business and the corporate sector are trying to work out what is going on on that side of the fence when they will not provide a business tax cut and when they will not support what we are trying to do—effectively redistribute the huge wealth that has been generated on one side of the country to ensure that the two million businesses across this nation have a huge injection in cash flow. What do those opposite do? They oppose it. The member for Dunkley comes in here parading himself as some friend of small business.

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