Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

This is why Labor contributed so much in its red-tape overreach to 519,000 jobs lost in small business under Labor. We have started well: We have more than $700 million worth of compliance savings already announced and already booked, but we have to keep that momentum going. We have seen 300,000 small businesses relieved of unnecessary PAYG and also BAS reporting obligations. We have seen the need to improve and fix the overreach in the Personal Property Security Register. We have seen changes in the area of franchising—all of these aimed at reducing the red tape burden.

We have in the Senate another opportunity to end the burden on business being the double-handler of paid parental leave payments. There is another $48 million worth of red-tape savings to be had there for businesses big and small for the not-for-profit obligations. We are evangelical about our work in relieving small businesses of that red-tape burden and re-energising enterprise, realising that these businesses need to be world-class every day to thrive and prosper. That is the discipline we should apply to our task, and not do what Labor did—whenever there was a problem, after spending all the money that was left from Howard government, just go and add some more regulation to it and hope it goes away. We are the only friends small business has in this chamber.

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