Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The strange thing, as a marginal federal member of this place, is that you come to this place and you consider the macro-economic picture, but when you go back to your electorate you very much consider the micro-economic picture. It really is an unusual dichotomy, especially when you come not from a political background but from a micro-economic family business background. The exciting part is that, on behalf of the people of Reid, I can pass on an unashamed message that they send: 'Thank you. Thank you for the budget and the measures in it with relevance to small business.'

In that vein, I want to pass on a particular story. There is a club at Drummoyne rowers. When I was growing up it had magnificent dollar drinks on Sunday afternoons and you could not move in the place. The club went broke some 15 or 20 years ago. It has been empty ever since and there is a perennial sign on Henley Marine Drive: 'for lease.' I was driving by there about three weeks ago, and you just assume that is going to still say 'for lease' but they have put a sticker on saying 'leased', after years and years. I could not help myself—I looked up the agent's number, rang the agent, introduced myself and said, 'Would you know who has leased that place? I do not expect you to pass on their details to me, but would you please pass my details on to that person?'

Within about 10 minutes, I get a phone call from a Mr Pino Salerno. Pino, as it turns out, runs restaurants in other parts of Sydney and he has leased that building. He had leased it just prior to the budget with a strategic plan to open it over the next two to three years in a staged way and he ultimately hoped to employ around 30 local people.

He then rang me back—I had made a friend, obviously, in Pino—after the budget. He said to me, 'Craig, I want to thank you. Would you please pass on my thanks to the minister, because I'll tell you what I'm going to do. With the changes you have made in the budget, instead of doing this in a staged way that will take three years, my partners and I have decided to accelerate the procedure and to bring it to a level where we will employ 30 local young people—predominantly through hospitality, which is my background—who are either studying for a degree or looking for start in the industry.' Every bit of equipment that he had planned out over the next three years to purchase in a measured fashion has been brought forward.

That is the real difference. That is at the coalface—the microeconomic impact of your measures, Minister, and our government's measures in this federal budget—

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