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

It is a pleasure to be speaking on this motion because it does highlight how amazing 12 months can be in the parliament and what those 12 months represents. Of course, that is the time between budgets and between what it takes for a Liberal government to get rid of all of Labor's small business plans, assistance and good measures and reintroduce them back in this budget because they discovered just how much damage the Liberals' cutting of small business assistance actually did. What was worse for the government is they had a look at the polling and realised how bad it was for their popularity. Then they looked at the consumer confidence and realised how bad it was for the economy. Then they looked even further and realised that business confidence had fallen through the floor as well. They had a moment of panic and they decided they had better quickly reintroduce all Labor's small business assistance package, which is exactly what they did. It is an amazing thing, but I am glad that the Liberal Party finally has come to the front on small business and realised it is a major contributor to our national economy.

Small business is a key sector for current and future economic growth. It is a major driver of employment, particularly in regional and rural area, and it is important to recognise the contribution that it makes in those areas. Around 35 per cent of the total number of small businesses in each state are located in regional area, compared to 20 per cent for larger firms. It is also important to recognise that over 95 per cent of the total number of businesses in Australia are small. Almost two-thirds have no employees and a further one-quarter only have between one and four employees. This means that only 10 per cent of small businesses have between four and 19 employees. The recent Reserve Bank of Australia conference on small business conditions and finance further identified that small business makes a significant contribution to the economy through the provision of innovation, with over 85 per cent of the businesses in Australia engaged in innovation being small businesses. The Australian Bureau of Statistics data also identified that 97.9 per cent of businesses in the agriculture, fisheries and forestry sectors in Australia are small businesses and that, of the more than 192,000 businesses in this area, 188,000 of them were classified as being small businesses. I have no doubt that farmers well understand this and they welcome the primary producers accelerated depreciation, along with the $20,000 instant asset write.

But for farmers, like the rest of the economy and small business, certainty is especially important in planning, and the government's assistance, while it is welcome, is very short term and for only two years. When the identical package with Labor was in, it was over the full forward estimates for a full four years. That did provide certainty and that did provide confidence, and that was reflected in all of the surveys that were done during that time. We had set ours at a more realistic level of $6,500, wanting to raise it to $10,000, more appropriately reflecting where small business actually spend their money. In June last year, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) report on agricultural commodities forecasts predicted a decrease in both crop and livestock production, and they have predicted that gross value of farm production will fall by 3.1 per cent in this current year to about $51 billion, with a further estimate that it will fall even further from the previous years.

This is bad news, and this drop in consumer confidence and business confidence has not been helped by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer who have talked down our economy for the past six years. They did that in opposition, and I have got to say that they did it very skilfully. If there is anything you could give a very big A-plus to for the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, it was talking down our economy. But one would expect that, when you get elected to become the Prime Minister and Treasurer, you would stop doing that, you would stop talking down the economy, and start talking up the economy. Of course, they just could not stop themselves. They just had to keep going, and that was reflected in the very poor conditions that we see the economy in today where people have stopped buying, businesses are struggling and we have needed this massive injection of assistance through the budget to try and help small business and the economy. In fact, so large is this injection that it is similar to the levels that we had during the global financial crisis. So not only are we seeing the deficit double since the Liberals won government, but this has occurred since the last budget. They have added an extra $39.1 billion worth of debt, and I suspect people ought to ask the government where are they getting the money to fund that debt.

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