David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

First of all, I would just like to compliment the motion and the member for Mallee for raising this very important issue. What is a small business in the Lyne electorate? In the Lyne electorate, we have over 10,000 small businesses. Whether it is a sole trader, small family business, larger small business or medium-size small business, they are employing the vast majority of the people in the Lyne electorate.

What does small business mean? It means that individual and their business is taking the responsibility and control of their income and his or her family's welfare onto their own plate. When you are running a small business, there is no knock-off time and there is no start time. Your business travels home with you to your house when you leave your workplace. That is the nature of a small business, particularly when you are starting up. It often means that for your house that you go to—when you have not finished your job, because it is perpetually on your mind—your mortgage on that house is what feeds your small business. Your start-up capital sometimes represents a mortgage on your own home.

As a small-business owner, it means that if you have employees, they have to get paid before you do. Their super and their wages are your responsibility. It is often the boss who is the last person paid. When things turn down, it is the boss who has to carry the responsibility. Whether you are a butcher, a baker, an electrician, a tradesman, running a bike store, running a cafe, running a hairdressing salon, running a B&B at Lake Cathie or someone in the hinterland in the beautiful Lansdowne region or turning up at your manufacturing factory off Lake Road, it is the same.

The accelerated depreciation measure that the member for Mallee has brought to the attention of the House is a great initiative and it has been very well received across the board. To write-off equipment over an accelerated time frame will improves cashflow. Depending on the tax being paid, it is up to roughly $4,500 for a small business for each write-off up to $20,000. That makes a huge difference to your cashflow.

In the Lyne electorate, there are roughly 1,800 agricultural small businesses registered. The initiative's accelerated depreciation includes fencing, water infrastructure and fodder storage. Instead of writing off fencing improvements over 30 years, you can now do the sensible thing and write-off that cost in a year. That makes a huge difference. If you have only ever run a grazing concern, you will realise how important your fences are. If you want to keep your agricultural concern drought proof, it involves a lot of pumping and a continual course of maintenance and replacement. Pumps cost a fortune. If you are running 10 or 20 troughs and you have got kilometres of agricultural piping serving them, then it is a huge continual drain. But to prepare yourself for drought, it is essential. We are writing that off up until 2017 in one go. That will make a huge difference to the cashflow and the bottom line of these small family businesses.

If you are in accounting space, it will generate a lot of activity in itself. In the last two weeks, I have visited many businesses in the electorate that are by one definition small; but by the definition in this initiative, they do turn over more than $2 million. But they are still very much small businesses. A lot of them have said, 'We may not qualify directly for this initiative, but a whole lot of our customers do.' If the small businesses do well, large and medium-sized businesses will do well as well.

I commend this initiative. It is a great small business budget. Small business is what drives the Lyne electorate and the coalition government is out there supporting them through this initiative.

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