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

Like the member for Reid, I would like to debunk a few myths in this House as well, particularly the one that the Liberal Party is the government of small business. If it was, I am sure the member for Reid would have spent more time talking about the actual achievements of the government in relation to small business, rather than a large amount of time on the very nice statements that we all support small business. He also spent a relatively large amount of time bagging the Labor Party, as the government seems like to do more than anything else—rather than deliver, just bag us; it seems to be the answer to everything at the moment—and he then talked about some of the promises they made. He seemed hardly able to talk about any actual policies delivered to small business, so it is not surprising that when you look at how business is actually feeling under this government, it does not match with the rhetoric of this government being a 'government for small business'.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry recently did its major small business survey for 2014 and it found the index of expected economic performance fell markedly for the fourth consecutive quarter and has now been below a 50 reading for three quarters in a row. It also revealed that small business is expecting future decreases in profit. Again, for a government that claims to be about small business, small business is not feeling the love at the moment. When you look at the issues of concern to small business, it tells a completely different story to the one we just heard from the member for Reid. Business taxes and government charges returned to the No. 1 constraint on small business under this government. After being replaced by insufficient demand for one quarter, taxes and government charges issue is back on top. Insufficient demand has steadily gained in importance since 2012, and suggests tepid demand is limiting the ability of small businesses to grow in 2014. Import competition gained in importance as a business constraint, moving from fifth to third. Perhaps some of the free trade agreements that the government spruiks as so good, but about which we still have not heard the detail and if they were that good I would suggest that we might know the detail—but import competition has risen up the scale from fifth to third as an issue of concern to business. Nonwage labour costs jumped from eighth to fourth place, and a federal government regulations returned to the top 10, in fifth place, despite the rhetoric that this government spruiks on a daily basis about reducing red tape costs. The way that business is experiencing this government, as demonstrated by this survey, is in complete contrast to the rhetoric of this government about what it is doing for small business.

Let us have a look at why small business might not be feeling the love from this government. Let us look at what they have done for small business—and I use the word 'done' rather than 'achieved' because most of it is not positive. One of the first things they did was to abolish the instant asset write-off, along with a number of other tax benefits they abolished. There was a tax hike for small business of over $4 billion delivered in the first year of this government. The largest chunk of that came from the repeal of the instant tax write-off, which was $2.9 billion in assistance to small business—$2.9 billion gone in that first year. Not only was it gone, but it was gone in the most incompetent of ways. On 31 December 2013, when the government was planning on abolishing this from 1 July 2013—so it was within the term of the last government; they were introducing retrospective legislation that reached back into a previous term of government—the tax office website still said it was there. It still said that the instant tax write-off was available on 31 December. Businesses found out more than halfway through a financial year that the tax law that they thought applied actually did not. There were many businesses in my area caught unawares and that found themselves with a tax liability they were not expecting—$2.9 billion across the sector.

The government also repealed the loss carry-back. Again, on 31 December 2013 the tax office said it was still there and it was actually going to be increased for the next financial year, but in fact the legislation was before the parliament to abolish it from 1 July the preceding year. So, again, businesses not only lost $950 million through this tax hike but many of them also did not even know it was coming. They made business decisions throughout the 2013-14 year based on the perfectly good assumption that the tax law would apply, because it was there, up on the tax office website, only to find that this government had reached back into the term of the preceding government and abolished it.

There was $445 million over the forward estimates in assistance for small business through the special depreciation rules for motor vehicles that was also abolished. The Abbott government slashed the previous Labor government's $1 billion investment in innovation to $342 million. So $650-odd million in innovation and research programs was slashed by this government, despite 21,000 small- to medium-sized enterprises around Australia benefitting from that program. The Labor government had introduced quarterly payments for R&D, and this government also abolished those retrospectively. Again, companies that thought they would be receiving their R&D benefits on a quarterly basis suddenly found they had reverted back to annual payments—an incredible difficulty for the cash flow of small business.

This is from a government that claims to be in favour of small business; it claims to be the government for small business. All of the speakers on that side have proudly said today that they all come from small businesses. If they come from small businesses, then you would expect them to understand the importance of certainty. They certainly talk about certainty, but they certainly do not deliver it. There were $4 billion in tax hikes for small business in the first year of this government, but done with absolutely incompetent implementation so that businesses did not even know that the decisions they were making today would be made invalid tomorrow through changes to the tax law. It is really quite extraordinary.

Then, of course, let's look at what the government has done to the NBN. We had a plan in place to deliver high-speed broadband across Australia. I was in a small town called Bemboka a couple of years ago, trying to buy some beautiful coffee cups from an art gallery there. The poor business owner. I say 'the poor business owner' because I could not believe what he was going through. He was using dial-up. He took half an hour to take my credit card transaction because it kept cutting out, and eventually he went and stood in the middle of a field where he knew he could get a signal in order to take my money. If I had not understood that this appalling circumstance of keeping your customer waiting for half an hour just to take their money was absolutely not his fault, if I were not feeling really sorry for him at that time, I probably would have walked out. I doubt that I would stand in a city business and wait half an hour to pay, but in this case I did.

What is the government doing for this business—laying fibre to up the road and copper to his gallery, a kilometre from the main road? How on earth can we expect Australian businesses to thrive with the third-rate 'fraudband' that this government is delivering? My electorate of Parramatta is the second CBD. Western Sydney is the fourth largest economy in Australia and Parramatta is the capital of it. It is considered to be the second CBD. We have a government that is committed to delivering 25 megabits per second by the end of its first term, which is a year and a half away, but Parramatta is not even on the list at the moment. It was on the list. There were supposed to be 62,000 houses receiving fibre to the home during this term of government. It has been removed. Parramatta has been moved down the list or it is not on the list at all. So nothing is going to happen in Parramatta between now and the next election.

I can tell you, because I have surveyed my electorate, that the average speed in Westmead, for example, is 8.5 megabits per second on download and less than one on upload. In Northmead, which is a 10 minute drive from the CBD, the average is 10.5. In Carlingford it is 10.2. The fastest is in Parramatta, which is the second CBD, at 20. How on earth can this government even deliver its second-rate 'fraudband' before the next election, in the timetable it promised, if it is not even coming into areas like Parramatta and delivering high-speed broadband for the second CBD? How does this government expect small business in Parramatta to flourish in an international economy, with all of the opportunities for delivering services across our region to the north, if it cannot even keep its promise for a second-rate 'fraudband' of 25 megabits? Is this for small business? I do not think so.

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