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

A small-business people's convention perhaps, because there was not one at Rooty Hill, was there? In that jaunt out to Western Sydney it was almost like the small-business person was kryptonite and Super Prime Minister could not go near them for fear of any injury or illness. I think the tacticians in the Prime Minister's office knew that it would be pretty hard finding a small-business person with much positive to say, so why risk that? That is my prediction. Whatever happens, you will see some festival of interest that will last about two newspaper cycles, then the show will move on as Labor tries to resurrect itself in the eyes of the electorate.

I talked about the harm. I do not think many people realise that since Labor was elected the number of people who derive their employment out of small business has declined by a quarter of a million. There are 243,000 fewer Australians employed in small business now than there was five years ago. Yet we hear that there is population growth. The world's greatest Treasurer tells us we have an economy that is booming along: 'Everything is peachy and humming along! We are at trend growth, or thereabouts, and isn't everything just great?' But in that narrative there is a complete disinterest in and ignorance of what is happening to the engine room of the economy which, under Labor, has had a cylinder or two taken out of it.

The number of people who are employed in small businesses has also declined by more than 10,000. The share that small business provides in terms of private sector workforce has contracted quite remarkably—from over 51 per cent, when Labor was elected, to 45.7 per cent. Yet there is no recognition of that within the government. In fact, the opposite has happened. I listened intently to see whether this consistent stream of research and advice, telling people how tough things are in the small-business sector, would register in the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook. I paid great interest to that document. I went from cover to cover to see whether there was any positive announcement about small business in that publication. And I found one!

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