Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am glad to see our very effective and efficient Minister for Small Business in the chamber. I am glad that we have a small-business minister in cabinet and that we have had one small-business minister in place for a considerable period of time doing a very good job, unlike the previous government, where we saw a revolving door of small-business ministers.

A very important thing that this bill does is ease the administrative burden on small business. The paid parental leave legislation will be amended to ensure that, from 1 March next year, employees will be paid directly by the Department of Human Services unless an employer opts to provide paid parental leave to its employees directly. This removes some of the red tape from our small-business sector. It is a small step but a small step on a long road that we must take.

If we look at the financial mess that the nation is in, with the debt mountain that we must now repay, the interest alone is close to $800 million every month. That is $800 million our nation must find to pay the interest only on the debt legacy that the previous Labor government has left this nation. That is why small business is so important, as it has been throughout our history. It is small business that creates the jobs. It is small business that creates the new innovations and enables our society to progress and grow that prosperity.

In looking at what we need to do in the years to come during this government's term and future terms, we come to the 'forgotten people' speech by Sir Robert Menzies, made on 22 May 1942. To put that speech in some historical context, it was made only a few weeks after the Battle of the Coral Sea and before the Battle of Midway, so the eventual outcome of the Second World War was at that time unknown. Menzies had the vision in that speech to set forward the important goals for the future of Australia. He finished the speech with these words:

…what really happens to us will depend on how many people we have who are of the great and sober and dynamic middle-class—the strivers, the planners, the ambitious ones. We shall destroy them at our peril.

It is interesting, therefore, to look at how many were destroyed during the previous, Labor government. I will give just a few numbers to show the damage that this previous Labor government did to our small-business sector.

After the Labor government left office, despite the population growing substantially over that period and the economy still ticking over, there were 3,000 fewer small businesses employing people. Three thousand small businesses had actually vacated the economy and were no longer employing people. That equated to the incredible number of 412,000 fewer people being employed in the small business sector. That means that 412,000 fewer Australians were being employed in the small business sector than when that government took over. We have seen the small business sector of the community contracting. Their share of employment has decreased. Before the previous government came to office, the small business sector created 53 per cent of our nation's jobs. After just six years of reckless policies and indifference to small business, we saw that collapse to 43 per cent. These are trends that we must reverse. This bill is a small start in doing that.

What we want is for people who operate small businesses—who often work a 10-, 12-, 14- or 16-hour day, or longer—to spend their remaining time after coming home to think about more innovations for their businesses, to think about how they can improve their businesses and to think about what experimentation they can do to make their businesses more competitive, more efficient and more productive. But what the previous Labor government did was strangle them with red tape. That meant that when a person who operates a small business came home after their long day the previous Labor government wanted to give them more red tape. They said: 'Here you go, now you have to fill out your employees' paperwork for the Paid Parental Leave scheme. You will not only be an unpaid tax collector for the nation but an unpaid administrator of the Paid Parental Leave scheme.' The coalition has said that this is a detrimental policy.

That is why what we are introducing in this bill reverses that. It removes that red tape, it removes that burden off that owner of a small business. That person often puts their home and their life savings at risk to create employment for others. This bill takes that burden off their backs and enables government to administer the Paid Parental Leave scheme. It is a small step but it is an important small step for this parliament.

The other issue that this bill deals with is encouraging responsible gambling. There are some in this House on the crossbenches that have a particular concern with the issue of problem gambling, and rightly so. Problem gambling is an issue in our society. But the methods put in by the previous government were nothing more than a fig leaf. We saw the member for Denison, who I note was in the chamber, come up with proposals. He believed that he had a signed agreement for his support for the previous government. That was ripped up, thrown away, discarded. We saw things brought in by the previous Labor government that simply did not work to affect the issue of problem gambling.

There was a trial of mandatory precommitment in the ACT. That was a complete farce. How can you have a trial of mandatory precommitment in the ACT when a punter or someone who is interested in gambling can simply go across the border to Queanbeyan where it does not apply? This is why it is best to repeal Labor's measures, which were simply a fig leaf that did nothing about the issue of problem gambling, and start again from a blank page.

When we start with that blank page, we need to recognise a few basic points. One is that many people in our society get pleasure from the recreational activity of gambling. We cannot condemn all these people. Who are we to say that the activities of someone who enjoys having a bet on a poker machine or at the horse or dog races are less socially desirable than the activities of someone who collects stamps or who enjoys spending their time knitting? We must recognise that it is a legitimate activity.

In recognising that there are also problem gamblers, we need to look at the problems caused by the internet. Today, almost everyone has a mobile casino in their pockets. Anyone walking around with an iPhone can simply pull their iPhone out of their pocket and gamble online. These are the challenges and the issues that we must tackle in this next parliament.

We also need to consider that the restrictions that we are putting on the gambling industry to do with the number of poker machines can be counterproductive. They can increase the margin, for it is the rate of return to player that ultimately makes a poker machine something that a problem gambler can lose a lot of money on. We need to look at issues of competition. Could it be that, if there were more competition between clubs and pubs in the rate of return to players, that would lift that rate of return and that might be the best way of reducing problem gambling?

I will not delay the House longer. I know that there are other members who wish to speak on this bill. There are many important points in this bill. It starts to clean up the mess, which is what the coalition must do during this term of government. I commend the bill to the House.

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