Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House notes:

(1) that Australian small business is a major contributor to the national economy and should be acknowledged for its innovation, entrepreneurship and endeavour, as demonstrated by the 15,000 small businesses across the electoral division of Mallee and many small businesses across the rest of Australia; and

(2) the recent budget must be commended for assisting small business with accelerated depreciation for assets purchased under $20,000.

Australian small business is a major contributor to the national economy and should be acknowledged for its innovation, entrepreneurship and endeavour, as demonstrated by the 15,000 small businesses across the electoral division of Mallee and the many small businesses across Australia.

It is the pursuits and endeavours of ordinary Australians that create the wealth that builds our society. There is a great Roy Orbison song, and I know it was a little before my time, but it was probably about the time that Deputy Speaker Broadbent was really in his prime that Roy Orbison was singing the song Working for the Man:'Hey now you better listen to me everyone of you, we got a lotta, lotta, lotta, lotta work to do.' It is all about getting people to work hard because they are working for the man. But the essence of the song actually says: 'One day I am going to be the man. One day I am going to be, not the worker, but the owner of the small business.' That is something we believe in: that you can start off working in a job and you might gain skills as an electrician or plumber, and then you think yourself, 'Wait a minute. There's more money to be made if I'm actually working for myself. There's more freedom if I'm working for myself.' And, actually, there are probably more hours to work if you are working for yourself.

Small business has been a fantastic element of the Australian economy. We need to harness small business. We need to empower small business and we need to endorse small business. Our government has done that in this budget. If you talk to any accountant in my electorate—who often operate as a small business—they will tell you that the $20,000 instant write-off for small businesses under $2 million has been immensely welcome. They will tell you that it has generated confidence, that people are grasping it, and that small business now, once again, knows that they are valued by the government. It is the shopkeeper; it is the retail business that might sell a bit of piping, some hardware or some tools; it is the plumber who might buy himself a new tradies trailer or even a new ute; it is a builder who will get a new nail gun; it is electrician—these are all critical small businesses.

The recent budget must be commended for assisting small business with the accelerated appreciation of assets of purchases under $20,000. It is not a grant of $20,000. It just means that if they are buying something that is going to help their business, and it is under the value of $20,000, they can write that off in one year. And not only once—they can buy something else. There might be a number of things. I run a small business and I think about the things that I might use in my business, and it opens the mind to what things we can buy that will drive productivity.

One of the other great things in this budget was the accelerated depreciation for irrigation infrastructure. In the electorate of Mallee—and most people are not aware of this—we are in the process of building probably one of the biggest irrigation infrastructure spends in a regional city in Australia at this point: $103 million of federal money plus $17 million of irrigators' money. We are building the Sunraysia Modernisation Project. We are putting new pipelines in. You can walk down these pipelines. Instead of irrigation channels that were leaky and unreliable, we have put pipelines in. This has also afforded us the opportunity to replant blocks of irrigation country that had been shut down through the very dry time. To do that we need to put more irrigation infrastructure in. This budget, and this initiative, lets that irrigation infrastructure also be 100 per cent tax-deductible.

The government is standing by small business. The government is growing opportunities. It is a government I am proud to be a part of. We are doing a lot for the 15,000 small businesses, and those who are employed by those small businesses, in the electorate of Mallee. It is a great initiative. It is a government that understands small business. If we empower our small businessmen, they will not just be working for the man, they will be the man. We will really make sure that we can capture the opportunities that their hard work affords.

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