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

It has been a year of positive action. The Abbott government has done an outstanding job implementing its election commitments. That is great for the government's achievements but it means even more for the small business men and women of Australia. It has progressed and improved prospects for them, where we are working to implement our election commitments.

It is not just in the electorate of the member for Lyons; this is right across the country. We have abolished the carbon tax. Hasn't that been great for small business? There have been $2 billion cuts to red and green tape. No-one suffers more from excessive red tape than small businesses. We have had the root and branch review of the competition laws—something desperately needed, that Labor would never go near.

There has been reform of the franchise code. That has been talked about for years but it has been done and delivered by this government. We have reformed the Export Market Development Grant Program and EFIC to better support small businesses which are taking advantage of the trade agreements that Minister Robb has executed with China, Japan and Korea.

There is the Entrepreneurs Infrastructure Program and support, through the Restart program, for mature age jobseekers, who have been welcomed and encouraged to be a part of the small business community. Work has gone into making sure that small businesses can ring Fair Work without being threatened with prosecution for the information they disclose—100,000 calls have been delivered to Fair Work, and assistance has been provided.

So we are well advanced in implementing our election commitments, but the winners of that action are the small businesses and family enterprises of Australia. But there is more work to do, because we work as hard for the success of small business as small business people do for themselves. Unfair contract term protections for small business are being advanced; deferring compulsory employer funded super so that businesses can get their heads above water; our Paid Parental Leave scheme, giving small and medium sized enterprises the chance to offer what big government departments and big corporates offer; looking after independent contractors and the self-employed; establishing a Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman; making sure finance is available for small business. There is so much happening here that is changing the environment and encouraging enterprise in our country. And, boy, didn't we need a change. There were 519,000 jobs lost under Labor. There was no interest in those job losses because none of them were union jobs. We had more Labor small business ministers than we had activity in enterprise and small business.

We are starting to see the differences. ASIC figures show us there were 100,000 more company registrations under this year of progress and achievement. Improvement in business conditions was captured by the ACCI survey and the Westpac small business interest. We have so much more to do. It has also been a year when Labor could not bother asking me a single question about small business—not one question from Labor. Small business people would know that in this place there is only one side of politics that cares about their interests, and that is the coalition. We will keep working. You can keep obstructing. Small business know which side is working for their support.

See this speech in context