Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

The Liberal Party is no friend of small business. I looked at what the member for Dunkley had to say when this legislation came before the chamber back in 2011. I spoke after him. Today he repeated this assertion that this national register of small business was a process that the Howard government had undertaken. I think I reminded him back in September 2011 that in fact he would have supported it, perhaps, in the 12th, 13th, 14th or 15th year of the Howard government. They really did nothing about this, and this approach has been a result of the federal Labor government's legislation in September 2011. We brought this legislation through. We brought this in and the coalition did nothing. They are not friends of small business; they never have been and never will be. We know which type of business they are on the side of: big business.

When it comes to this particular thing, we are the ones who understand business. This particular legislation that we brought in was important at the time because we had different amounts that had to be paid in different jurisdictions. For example, in my home state of Queensland a business had to pay $133.60 for one-off registration or $255.60 for three-year registration. It varied in every state and territory. Thirty thousand businesses operated in multiple jurisdictions, and that equated to thousands and thousands of dollars a year.

I know what it is like to run a business, because I ran a business for more than two decades before I came here. I wonder how many businesses the shadow minister for small business ran. I built that business up into a multimillion-dollar business, so I understand what it is like to run a business—to deal with unions, with individuals, with Telstra and with those sorts of things.

This particular legislation that we brought in and that brought in this system enhanced the attitude of this government and made a difference in the lives of small business operators by reducing red tape and costs and, as the Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business talked about, bringing modernity to the system and getting rid of the paper trail. So that is what happened. We know that, with 1.5 million business names and 15 million free business name searches being conducted, of course there may be some difficulties in implementation.

I had a look at what the shadow minister said. Where was he talking about these problems in his speech back in 2011? He was saying the coalition were supportive of what we were doing. He was saying that they were going to support it. In fact, he was saying, 'We actually would have done it—in fact, we were doing it.' But, in fact, they were not doing it at all.

The situation is that government have given money. As the Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business referred to, we have provided another $7.8 million to assist in this regard. We have also seen ASIC take steps, including 150 new telephone lines in the call centre and recruitment of additional staff in the client contact centre. We have seen improvements in the average call waiting times and they have also decreased from almost 30 minutes in February this year to five minutes and 30 seconds last week.

We have seen an additional $7.8 million provided to ASIC to do improvements in this regard. We have also seen upgrades to telephony infrastructure. We have seen an increase in the rate of service for call centres over the next two years to a target of 60 per cent of all calls answered in 300 seconds—a grade of service which is comparable to other government agencies.

Those opposite who opposed small business write-offs, who want to jack up company tax, who actually opposed almost every assistance we provided to small business, including increasing the tax-free threshold for home-based small businesses, and who voted against that should hang their heads in shame when it comes to small business.

In fact, this is a disingenuous motion by the member for Dunkley, because his side of the politics would never have the wit or wisdom to do this. We have done it. We are implementing it. It helps small business. Those opposite never help small business. They are always on the side of big business. We are the ones who brought in competition policy. We are the ones who brought in trade practices legislation back in the days of the Whitlam government and who upgraded it in the days of this government. We have done a good job in assisting small business. Those opposite have not when it comes to investment, infrastructure and assistance to small business. (Time expired)

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