Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I really want to express my gratitude to the member for Forde for giving me the opportunity to talk about Labor's really strong commitment to small business and the runs on the board that we have in trying to support small businesses to do what they do best.

I have 5,000 innovative and entrepreneurial small businesses operating in my electorate of Hotham, and I hope they agree that I have been a very forceful defender of their interests in my time in this House. I have a bit of a business background myself so I do have a little knowledge of some of the issues they face, in particular in their dealings with government. But I am particularly interested in what it is that this House can do to let small business do what they do best. I know how central small businesses are going to be to Australia's economic future.

Entrepreneurship and innovation have always mattered to us in Australia, but when we look at where our economy is heading we can see its growing importance in each year. We know that our economic future is going to be very much dependent on how we can transition into a knowledge-based economy in Australia. We know that as the global economy becomes more and more competitive we are going to need to show the world that Australians can do things that no-one else in the world can do, to increase our prosperity. And we know that the small businesses in this country and the men and women who lead them will help our economy capture some of the incredible opportunities that lie ahead in the Asian century and the digital century, that are part of Australia's future.

We are all singing from the same song book here. Labor has known about this for a long time and, of course, when in government we put in place some really important measures that were very popular in the small business community to help small businesses go about their business. In fact, the achievements which this government crows about so endlessly are actually in large part a kind of reheated, second helping of some of the important initiatives that Labor has put in place and which have been resurrected, dare I say it, with much self-congratulation on the other side of the House.

Central to all of this policy discussion is the instant asset tax write-off. What a good idea, in a time where small businesses need a bit of a lift, to allow them to write off some of their assets. It was a great idea when we implemented it in government, but then those on the other side of the House abolished it when they came to power. I really want that on the record: the instant asset tax write-off existed, and they abolished it. When in government, Labor proposed a tax cut for small business, but those on the other side of the House opposed it. You can understand a little bit of frustration from those of us on this side of the House, because we see a bit of grubby politics coming into an area where there is no need for any partisanship. We are all in furious agreement: small businesses are incredibly important, they are an important driver of growth now and they will matter more in the future, and we should be doing what we can to support them. It is in that good faith principle that Labor has tried to create policy and done so, I think, very successfully.

Those on the other side have been trying desperately, in whatever way they can, to imply that there is some reticence on this side of the House to get these reforms into law so that small businesses can start to benefit from them. This culminated in the somewhat interesting display of the government voting down its own legislation. I have to say it is just an expression of how enthusiastic Labor is about some of these initiatives that we wanted to get this into the Senate as quickly as we can so that we can help small business men and women to benefit from these policies.

The truth is that, when we look at the policy positions of both parties, we see a couple of good ideas that Labor came up with in government that have been adopted by those on the other side of the House, but that is not where it ends. What we saw in the budget reply speech by the Leader of the Opposition a couple of months ago was a great new threshold of policy for small business. What Labor is starting to talk about now is a five per cent tax cut for small businesses. The Prime Minister dismissed the idea out of hand immediately, but based on past form I have little doubt that he and the very effervescent Minister for Small Business will be coming back and putting that forward as their own idea in due course.

I close by saying that it is well and good to talk about specific policies relating to small business, but what small businesses need most is a thriving Australian economy full of confident consumers. I would say to the government that, in their two years or so in office, they have done just about everything that they can to knock the confidence of the economy, and the confidence of consumers in this country, on the head. I would ask them to turn their attentions to this important question that is really on the minds of small business in my community of Hotham.

Debate interrupted.

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