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

My understanding is that Minister Combet is also handling small business this evening, so I hope that is a satisfying experience. That would make six ministers in 16 months handling small business. It is good; you are probably at no more disadvantage than the incumbent—but thank you. Minister, I will just draw your attention to some of the commentary on budget night. ACCI said:

The nation's economic engine room of two million small businesses employing seven million people are too big to ignore but the budget largely leaves them shortchanged …

It said the 'budget ignores small business and hard savings choices'. A further statement was:

There's not one small business initiative worth speaking about tonight …

The Food and Grocery Council said:

… there was little in the budget to stimulate growth and confidence, and nothing to relieve the ever increasing regulatory burden on business.

The New South Wales chamber of commerce commentary was: 'Small business has been ignored again'—et cetera et cetera.

My first question is to invite you to see if you can identify any single specific positive measure directly intended to support the small business community. We could find no such measure in any of the budget documentation that has been available. Some commentary since has sought to cobble together bits and pieces going on elsewhere that may happen to go past a window of a small business in terms of their support.

My second question relates to some of the measures that are included. I refer to the bringing forward of tax liabilities to a monthly payment arrangement for many Australian businesses, and an observation by some that that risks transferring the cash-flow burden to small business, where those caught up in that measure will need to rejig their own cash flow to respond to the tax office requirements—and that may be to the detriment of small business. I also invite you to advise whether any analysis has been done on the impact of that measure now, given that it was originally inspired by the prospect of a budget surplus that now is not on the horizon. The small businesses of Australia would have to see Labor elected four times before there is any prospect of a surplus.

In relation to business confidence, there is the really worrying sign that, since Labor was elected, nearly 243,000 jobs have been lost from small business. Yet the government and the budget seem completely unresponsive to those job losses from what should be the engine room of the economy but actually feels like one that has had some cylinders taken out. Minister, it is a fact that there are 3,000 fewer small businesses employing people in the latest figures, compared to when your government was elected. Again, if you could point me to any measure in the document that seeks to turn that around and look beyond the economy as it is now to one where small business and enterprise are valued and supported, that would be helpful.

There is also further money in the budget, on top of the $125 million, to fix the business names register—$7.8 million. I am looking for your assurance that that will fix the problems with the register, including the broken promise of this government not to breach the privacy of home based businesses—a promise that has not been kept that we sought to pursue with the government late last year, to no avail.

Finally, one of the things the government likes to point to in the budget is its establishment of a small business commissioner, an able person that does not actually have a commission. There is no clear purpose or legislative basis for that role. We learnt through the budget and in Senate estimates last night that it is not actually an ongoing program, so that token interest is actually disappearing, even though the government announced this position—a commissioner with no commission—as being really significant to ensuring small business remains at the forefront of government policy-making.

Minister, essentially the thesis that the public is providing on the budget as it relates to small business is that it is not the kick-start they were looking for but just another kick; and it is making an already difficult situation worse, one compounded by the world's largest carbon tax, which you have spoken about—that small business is supposed to simply suck it up or pass on the costs of that tax, when anyone with any appreciation of the real economy would know that, in many cases, neither is possible.

Are we to expect some new declaration of interest in small business in the 101 days before the next election? There is no provision for that in the budget, and I am wondering whether we can expect some sort of PR campaign cobbling together remotely related things as a substitute for a policy. (Time expired)

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