Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

I look curiously at these motions put up by the Liberal Party and I wonder why it is they need to remind themselves that small businesses and medium businesses are the engine room of the economy. Then when Liberal Party members get a chance to speak, they come in here and double their attack on the Labor budget rather than talk about what they have actually done for small business, which of course is very, very little. The only great big thing they have done for small business is take away, cut, defund and remove assistance programs, tax assistance, asset-building assistance and depreciation pools. That is what they have done for small business. If you listen carefully to what the Liberal Party members say on small business, they say, 'Let's attack Labor and that'll be enough.' The best thing the Liberals think they can do for small business is double the attack on Labor's budget. I think there is a little bit more to it than that. I think you have to deliver something concrete and real. You have to deliver it with funding. You have to you deliver it with real numbers.

Also, I am very interested in the way the Liberal Party always says that there were these hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in small business at the same time that unemployment under Labor was going up. But now under their watch unemployment has gone to a record of 6.4 per cent, a devastatingly high number. It is much, much higher for young people. Under their watch, they claim somehow they are doing more for small business, but unemployment is getting higher. Those are the real numbers. The last time unemployment was this high was 2002, and guess who was the employment minister. You bet you know it: Tony Abbott.

But, if there is one overarching responsibility that any government has towards small business, the economy and ordinary Australians, it is to at least keep confidence neutral. I would say their job is actually to lift the confidence of consumers and small business so that businesses can get on with the job they are doing, which is to employ people, to innovate, to do things, to invest in their own businesses.

But not only do they take away the physical means by which small business can do that, by taking away billions of dollars of direct assistance to small business; they then have a Treasurer who thinks the best way to increase confidence in Australia is to continually tell everyone that our economy is stuffed and that we are going to be like Greece very shortly. That has to instil a lot of confidence in small business! As I talk to small business, as I know the Liberal Party do, I listen to them, and what do they say to me? They say: 'Gee, our confidence is low. I was thinking about putting someone on, but I'm really scared.' What are they scared of? They are scared of us somehow turning into Greece, because the Treasurer of the country keeps telling them that is going to be the case.

So, when it comes to real investment, it ain't there. If they had just frozen the money, I would have a complaint about it. I reckon that would be bad enough. But they took the money away—billions of dollars. They took away the direct assistance. They smashed confidence.

There was a poll just recently, a really important one on the government. Consumer polls, as we know—the regular Newspolls that you get and all the rest of it—give a clear indication that the community does not like this government. They do not like the Liberal government. They do not like Tony Abbott. They just do not like this government. I think that polling has been consistent and clear for a while. But then there was another regular poll of business in this country, and business confidence is at a smashing all-time low. There has just never been this little confidence. I remember prior to the election Tony Abbott made a solemn promise, hand on heart: there would be a shot in the arm for confidence in our economy. What has happened since is that every measure of confidence has fallen off the table. It is one thing to say you are going to boost confidence, but you actually have to do something about it.

But there was an even more interesting poll taken very recently—one inside the Liberal Party, in the dark rooms of the Liberal Party itself, all the guys and girls sitting over there. They had a little poll in their caucus room. They excluded half their caucus from having a vote to start with, but of the half that were allowed a vote—the backbench—60 per cent voted against their leader, Tony Abbott, the Prime Minister, because they have no confidence either. They have lost hope. When you lose hope in your leader, things do not look too good.

So when I see this motion here before us, which talks about the engine room of the economy and employing people, I think: 'What a lot of pollywaffle from these guys.' Do something about the confidence in your own party room, for a start. Do something about the confidence of big business and small business. Do something about confidence in the economy. Start putting some real funds back into small business to help them make employment choices, to help them buy equipment and assets. Actually do something, like Labor did. We did it through the toughest economic times, through a global financial crisis, because that was the right thing to do by the economy—to make sure that small business kept employing people. The best thing you can ever do for the economy is make sure people have a job. (Time expired)

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