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

They will get it—yes. More is less and less is more. The reality is that if you have a pie and you make the pie bigger, you cannot say that people lost jobs within the pie. There are actually more jobs. There are actually more small businesses.

The other curious factor about these things is that was done at a time when the economy was actually going through its most difficult period—through a global financial crisis. If you were to look at government spending, you might think that during a period of a global financial crisis a government might spend more. In fact, it might have record levels of spending. And Labor certainly was very enthusiastic about supporting the economy and jobs because we understood that the best way you could inoculate yourself against the shocks of a global financial crisis was to make sure the economy was strong and people kept their jobs. If you kept your job, that meant you could pay your mortgage and it meant the economy would keep going and that is exactly what it did. Those spending levels at that time were really important because it did underpin the economy and people's jobs. I think we did a really good thing.

You might be a bit surprised today if you realise that this big spending Liberal government that we have got—big taxing, big spending—are now at record spending levels in non-global financial crisis times. You would have to ask where they are spending the money. What is driving that enormous amount of spending? You could understand it during a really big crisis. The problem with having the crisis levels of spending that the government have in place right now is how can the economy afford it? We could maybe work through it, but the problem is if there is another crisis down the track, can we really trust this government that are already spending at crisis levels now when there is not a crisis? I hope there is not one, but at least maybe there should be some redundancy planning around what the government might be forced to do if there were to be some sort of a need for the government to spend. As you can see, it is not as rosy a picture as the government might want to portray.

There is a range of things that the government has done that we would obviously support that are really important, particularly in terms of the bill that is before the House in making some administrative changes to superannuation guarantee. They will help the government to navigate around some of these issues. At the same time, we need to acknowledge that for small business—because this is who we are talking about—there are a number of things that the government has done alongside these things. In particular, they have cut more than $2 billion—that is a lot of money—from skills and training programs. You would think that at a time when there is pressure on employment and unemployment is trending up—it is over six per cent, which is too high for any government and it should be much lower—that you would perhaps take some of that record crisis spending and you would spend it on skills and training, because that is what in turn will pay back the economy and will pay back small business.

Small business will regularly tell us that there are a number of top five things that they are most concerned about. Cashflow is always in the top five, as you would expect, and the other one is spending on skills and training, because if they are wanting to transition from being a non-employing business—or even an employing small business; a microbusiness—to someone who is going to employ they are looking for the right skill set. They want really good, well-trained, skilled people, so that they can have the confidence to grow their business. That confidence, unfortunately, has been shattered by the cutting back of more than $2 billion from those programs.

While we are on the subject of small business and how they manage through and navigate through difficult times, in terms of start-up finance there are some important issues that also need to be raised. Labor are very determined that it will work with the financial sector, the banks and finance industry, to establish a partial guarantee scheme, a start-up finance scheme to help more Australians convert their great ideas into great businesses. We think that is another great way to underpin our economy. Not only then do you provide that sort of start-up funding, you do it in partnership with industry and with the finance sector; you also do it in partnership with government and with people who actually know the business, know the industry and who are not just relying on government to pick the winners. This will enable entrepreneurs to access the capital they need to start and grow their enterprises. We think that is a very positive way forward.

We have also announced that we will work with government. There is the opposition's invitation to the government to work with us on a fair and fiscally responsible plan to reduce the small business company tax rate not by 1½ per cent but a full five per cent. We think that can be achieved and it can be done. It can be done in the context of good government, responsible spending and saving. It will do this, without doubt, and it will boost confidence. It will boost the economy and in return it will mean that the government has more tax receipts, so there will be further revenue from government by reducing the tax burden on small business company tax that they pay. These are very good things. Labor have extended the olive branch in these areas and said, 'Work with us as we will work with you when it comes to supporting small business.' We are yet to see the same sort of goodwill in return that Labor have extended, but I do await eagerly for that to happen.

The bill that is before the House is a good bill. Labor will be supporting it. It goes some small way to clarifying at least the government's position on superannuation. Although, as I have noted in the past, in other areas of superannuation the government has a very poor track record. Coming to government, one of the first things they did was remove the low-income superannuation contribution to something like 2.7 million low-paid workers—people who earn less than $37,000 a year. It was only a small tax anomaly, up to $500, that Labor had rectified and that the government has put back in place. This is an anomaly that will again have to be fixed at some point. The government know and understand that. It was also the Liberal government, when they came to power, that were the first to delay significantly, by a number of years, the superannuation guarantee from nine to 12 per cent. These are again things that will have to be corrected in the future.

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