Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) November was Shop Small month;

(b) Shop Small is an annual event designed to encourage people to explore their local small businesses;

(c) small business is a major driver of both employment and production; and

(d) shopping locally helps to ensure a vibrant local community and a stronger local economy;

(2) acknowledges the many people who went out to support local business during Shop Small month; and

(3) encourages people to shop locally this Christmas.

I have very weird taste in music. All my life, I have liked music that no-one else likes. I have quite often bought CDs, and the total sales of that CD for that particular band or that particular group would be maybe 200. So I learnt really early in my life that, if I wanted those bands to make a second CD, I needed to buy the first one. I was one of a very small number of people that they depended on. I know in my community too that, if we want our local butcher to survive the onslaught of a major retail chain, the one thing we have to do is shop there. That is the one thing that causes them to survive.

There are reasons why Shop Small month, in November, was a very good idea. It was not just because 95 per cent of the two million actively trading businesses in Australia are small and not just because there are 116,000—nearly 117,000—small businesses in Western Sydney but because, when you shop small and shop locally, the money you spend circulates through your local economy more than it does if you shop in a large chain. In fact, if you spend a dollar at a small local business, 45c of that will be reinvested locally, compared to only 15c if you shop in a large retailer.

We all know that, no matter where you go in this country, you find small businesses that have great products to sell, whether it is a cider maker in Bendigo that found a better use for the apples that are grown locally or it is Cinnabar, in Wagga, which makes fantastic clothing out of the local merino wool. In my area, it might be the local Spar Supermarket, in North Parramatta, a small supermarket that sells local produce on a regular basis, a fantastic place to shop. There are great local businesses that need our support.

With Christmas coming up, we all have another opportunity to support our local businesses, because they very much make us who we are. Innovation in product and innovation in style come from these small businesses. In my community of Parramatta, it is our small business that is very much responsible for the diversity and range and the innovation in product, whether it is Desi Kasai butchers, who have introduced camel, the really fine cuts of goat and skin-on goat into Harris Park; the Green Wheat bakery, in Merrylands, which uses wholemeal flour to make Afghani bread; or Patel Brothers, which has a small supermarket chain which sells brown basmati rice by the 20-kilo bag—you would not go anywhere else for rice than the Patel Brothers in Harris Park.

There is Shri Ganesh foods, in Quakers Hill, slightly out of my electorate, which makes all the batters for idlis and dosas, an incredibly successful local food manufacturer; as is Real Turkish Delight, also just on the other side of my electorate, in Auburn. It makes fantastic chocolate and Turkish delight. If you want the really modern pork cuts, you cannot go past the Thai and Chinese butchers in my region, like the New Hup Fatt butchery in Merrylands. I call them the 'Fatt butchery' because it is part of their name. They have a fantastic range of pork.

And then, as I said, we have Spar, which has opened up in North Parramatta. I can drop in there on the way home. There you find stocks from incredibly good local suppliers such as The One That Got Away, which packages fish in Bondi and sells it through the small supermarkets. Again, I know when I go there that, if I want to be able to get that particular product and I want Spar to keep stocking it, I have to buy it. So I use my purchasing power in order to ensure that my community provides me with the service that it needs.

And then of course we have the Chinese herbalist; the new meditation schools; and the music and dance teachers in a range of dance forms from across the world, including Carnatic music and dance. We have specialists in renewable energy that have moved into that space of helping households and business keep their prices down. We have businesses that are very good at helping other businesses move online and a range of new disrupted technology organisations such as the local one that provides human resources services online. These are the people who run these businesses who are building links in our community and introducing the diversity of range which makes our community strong. We also have small businesses building business links with their country, with the country of their parents, in Kenya, Lebanon, Nepal, Indonesia, India and China, and, through those business relationships, dragging our economy forward to a place where it can prosper.

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