Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Dr Leigh's speech was very revealing about Labor's attitude to small business. Because the member for Fraser is the shadow Assistant Treasurer he was given a 15-minute timeslot to talk about the small business package, but after approximately 4½ minutes the shadow Assistant Treasurer ran out of content and started talking about anything other than small business. In fact, most of the topic of his conversation and his speech from then on was trying to talk down the national economy. I think today the reason they tried to guillotine the debate on small business is really because they did not have anything to say. If the shadow Assistant Treasurer can only speak on small business for 4½ minutes, then presumably very few of the backbench can speak on it for much longer than that either.

On this side of the House we know that small businesses are the engine room of the economy. They contribute $330 billion towards our national economic output. They employ 4.5 million people. And we know that when small businesses are doing well we all do well—they are growing; they are thriving; they are profitable; and they are employing people and creating wealth. That is known deep in our veins on this side of the House—in part, because so many people on this side of the House have been small business owners themselves. They have run businesses; they know what private enterprise is about. I think the reason there is so little interest in small business from the Labor side of the chamber is because so very few have even worked in a small business, let alone run a small business. But most of them have been union officials, and I think that tends to guide the overall attitude to this sector.

We are very proud of this small business package. It forms the centrepiece of this year's budget. The most important measure of it was, firstly, an immediate tax cut—from 1 July—of 1.5 percentage points. That does not just apply to incorporated entities; it also applies to unincorporated businesses, who tend to form the bulk of small businesses. The second key measure in the package is a $20,000 instant asset write-off measure. This is a very significant measure. It means that any small business owner can go out there—from a week ago—purchase any asset worth up to $20,000 and immediately write that asset off against that business's tax income for the year. That has an immediate impact on cash-flow perspective for small businesses, and that means they have a greater ability to invest in other things, to employ others, to grow and to become more profitable as well. These are very important measures. It is a $5.5 billion package in totality. We think it will have an absolutely profound impact on small business growth and, therefore, on the economic growth of our nation.

The shadow Assistant Treasurer was talking down the economy throughout his speech. I would like to point out a couple of statistics for him. Today was the day the national accounts were brought down, and I would have thought that the shadow Assistant Treasurer would have referred to those national accounts, because the headline figure of those national accounts was that there was 0.9 per cent growth for the March quarter. That makes us one of the fastest-growing wealthy economies in the world. It puts us at a considerably faster growth rate than where we were in the last years of the Labor government.

Of course, everyone in this chamber knows that the jobs growth is four times higher than in the last year of the Labor government. We know that retail sales are up. We know that there are record new businesses started and we know that there are record residential housing approvals. These are all the fantastic economic green shoots in our economy. We think that this small business package will add to that and continue to support economic growth across the nation.

Labor's attitude to small business is well known—in fact, perhaps the most honest remark from the Labor Party came from their former leader Kim Beazley who, in July of 2000, acknowledged very frankly: 'We have never pretended to be a small business party.' He was exactly right. They have never been a small business party. The future minister for small business, Craig Emerson, ramped up Labor's anti-small-business rhetoric when he stated in the House of Representatives in February 2006:

Labor, as a party, was born of the trade union movement. We are proud of our bonds with the trade union movement—we say it long, we say it hard and we say it often. The Liberal Party knows its origins and so do we. We recognise our origins, and we are very proud of our bonds with the trade union movement.

I that those two quotes encapsulate it. Leader Kim Beazley says, 'We never pretend to be a small business party', and then Craig Emerson says, 'Our bonds and our roots are with the trade union movement'. That, I think, summarises the key differences between the Labor Party on that side and the Liberal and National Parties over here.

Another indication of Labor's interest in this topic—other than the shadow Assistant Treasurer only being able to speak on the topic for 4½ minutes of a 15 minute speech—is that there were six small business ministers in six years, and none of them had any small business experience. You would think if you had six in six years you could at least find one. But, no; we had: Craig Emerson, who was an economist and a Public Servant; Nick Sherry, a union official; Mark Arbib, a union official; Brendan O'Connor, a union official; Chris Bowen, a union official; and Gary Gray—guess what?—a union official. No, sorry, he was the ALP National Secretary and Executive Director and he did have some experience with Woodside. Out of six small business ministers in a row they could not find a single member on their side of the House that had any small business experience.

Mr Champion interjecting—

I have an interjection from the other side as to the current small business minister. Yes, he was an owner of a small business, with his wife. And he frequently talks about that and he brings that experience and that passion for small business to his job.

Of course, now that Labor is in opposition nothing has changed. The opposition spokesperson for small business was the national secretary of the AWU. Bernie Ripoll is the shadow minister assisting the minister for small business and he was a union organiser for the State Public Services Federation of Queensland. So that almost brings it up to eight in a row where we have not had a single small business person who can fill that spot on the Labor benches. Surely, there must be one person who has had some small business experience on that side of the House.

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