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

It gives me great pleasure to rise to speak on the motion moved by my good friend the member for Reid on small business. But before I do I would like to pick up on a few points the member for Parramatta mentioned. She talked about how Labor was 'feeling the love' for small business. Let's go through how the previous Labor government shared the love with small business. We had no fewer than six separate ministers for small business—a revolving rotisserie. We had the good Dr Emerson, the good Senator Sherry, the good Senator Arbib and current members of the opposition: the members for Gorton, McMahon and Brand. All had their turn at being small business minister, and what did they achieve by 'sharing the love'?

Let's just have a look at their record over the six years. Despite the population growing and the economy growing, under those six small business ministers we had 3,000 fewer small businesses employing people. If we look at the number of people that small business employed under the previous Labor regime, there were 420,000 fewer. That is over 420,000 people who were previously employed in small business. Under the 'shared love' of the previous Labor government, there were 420,000 fewer.

In fact, I am sure many of these small business ministers misunderstood what their job was, because they achieved making the small business sector of our society smaller. Before they came to office the small business sector represented 53 per cent of the economy. After six years of disastrous policy, that number decreased from 53 per cent to 45 per cent. There are 420,000 fewer people employed. There are 3,000 fewer small businesses employing people. What a tragic, disastrous and appalling record.

The reason is that, unfortunately, the Labor Party simply do not get it. They simply do not understand small business because they have never been involved in it or worked in it themselves. It is small business that is the true driver of the economy. It is small business that creates the innovation. It is small business that is the job creator of this nation. That is why governments must get off the back of small business. We must reduce the amount of red tape, which is exactly what we are doing. It is the only way that we are going to get out of the mess that we have inherited, the legacy of the six years of the Labor government, the current reason we are spending 10 per cent more than what we are getting in income. The only way we are going to get out of that mess is through innovation and investment by small business. That is the only way.

That brings me onto the second point of the motion moved by the member for Reid where he talks about improved infrastructure. That is one of the things this government is doing. I look at my city and what we have already seen—the doubling and widening of the M5 through the East Hills and Bankstown area. That makes moving and delivering goods through south-west Sydney so much quicker for small business. We have seen, if re-elected, the New South Wales government's infrastructure plans to greatly improve New South Wales. There is the WestConnex project which is so vital to our small business community to enable small business to get around Sydney.

But what do we have promised from the Labor Party? We know that if a New South Wales Labor government ever came into existence their promise is to tear up, scrap and cancel those infrastructure projects so desperately needed for Western Sydney. Imagine a government having an election campaign promising to cancel infrastructure projects. That is what we have with New South Wales Labor. They plan to cancel parts of the WestConnex project. This would be an absolute disaster if it were ever allowed to happen. It would be a disaster for small business.

This government is getting on with making it easier for small business to get on with work and get on with employing people. It is not an easy task after the legacy of mess, debt and deficit that we have inherited, but we are getting on with the job. The most important thing we can do is in the area of competition policy and price discrimination. I look forward to our root-and-branch review being tabled— (Time expired)

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