Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Gilmore is absolutely right. We have to build a stronger economy. When I came back to parliament a couple of days ago for this budget session, the member for Gilmore said to me that she had personally doorknocked as many small businesses as she could and taken around a brochure explaining to them the instant asset write-off in particular but also the 1½ per cent tax cut for those that are incorporated and the five per cent tax discount to those small businesses who are not incorporated. She went around doorknocking those small businesses all over her electorate of Gilmore and explained to them the benefits of the government's budget—and got a fantastic reception. She has 8,600 small businesses in her electorate. I know she was not able to do all of those in a week, but I have high expectations she will finish them off in the next couple of weeks.

The reason it is important that we focus on small business is that, as the Prime Minister said, small business is the engine room of the Australian economy. Small businesses are now the big disrupters of the global economy. They are the ones at home on a computer, or perhaps in the garage, working away at some innovative development that is going to get to market in a more substantial way than anything that has ever got to market previously in the history of modern humanity. As such, because of the development of the internet and the breakdown of trade barriers, our small businesses have greater opportunities than ever before to access the global market. We are doing our best as a government to help them along the way. We are not only opening up new trade agreements with China, Korea, Japan and, potentially, India—even as we speak, the Minister for Trade is working away at these sorts of things—but, significantly, we are getting rid of the red tape. We have removed 50,000 pages of regulation in just 18 months. We are opening the doors to a fairer employee share scheme arrangement.

Mr Perrett interjecting—

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