Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker! I have spent most of my adult life operating my own small businesses, unlike those opposite. It is not always a comfortable life, but it is a choice made by millions of Australians and one upon which Australia relies. Small businesses employ 45 per cent of workers in this country. We all know how important that growing contribution is going to be as the economy changes. The motion lists four fantastic initiatives that the government has undertaken to encourage and support small businesses—four out of many. It does not even begin to mention the billions of dollars a year we have saved companies by cuts to unnecessary red tape, the government's moves to cut tax for the country's thousands of unincorporated small businesses or the millions of dollars that the government has invested to support small farming businesses. I hope that other members will elaborate on these and other commendable actions.

I want to talk about two specific initiatives. The first of these is something that residents of my electorate would have heard me talking about for some time—that is, we must make it easier for small businesses to do business with the federal government. As we have heard, the small business minister has challenged us to think locally first. The government has certainly taken this challenge on board. We have created a standard suite of simplified contract and tender documents for Commonwealth procurement, and made credit and debit cards the government's preferred payment method for purchases under $10,000. In the last budget, the Treasurer also announced that we would explore electronic invoicing.

These measures make it easier for local Australian small businesses to win Commonwealth contracts. Already we are seeing 34 per cent of the government's procured goods and services supplied by 23,400 small businesses. The Turnbull government shops locally where it can. These are important initiatives, but there is much more to be done in this space.

My first small business was in the construction sector. There are more than 300,000 small businesses in that sector who have recently had their chances of a bright future substantially improved by the Turnbull government's reintroduction of the ABCC. Since Labor abolished the ABCC, the CFMEU have become experts in wasting time and bullyboy tactics. The knock-on effects on the mum-and-dad contractors of these go-slow shenanigans can be disastrous. For them, with tight margins and insecure cash flow, it too often means that their business has had to fold. The ABCC will stamp out this corruption and lawlessness, and give small businesses a fighting chance.

Without the ABCC, unions have also been forcing contractors to use union-preferred suppliers, generally a euphemism for expensive, heavily-unionised friends of the union bosses. The act introduces a new building code to protect smaller subcontractors from these unfair practices. In the future, if you want to get a contract to do building work on behalf of the federal government, you will have to ensure that your business complies with the building code, and this will result in small businesses getting a fair go.

All of these changes will make a big difference but, in some ways, the most important is yet to some. Taxes are a significantly bigger problem for small businesses than they are for larger enterprises. When your turnover is modest and every dollar is precious, handing over 28½ per cent of your profits to the taxman does not leave you a great deal to reinvest in your company.

The Turnbull government's enterprise tax plan is currently before the House. If passed, it will deliver millions in savings to small businesses in this country. In many cases, these reductions in tax rates will be enough to allow small businesses to take on another full-time member of staff. For others, it will provide the capital to invest in new equipment or cost-saving technology to double down on those gains for the future. In my electorate and all over Australia, people are crying out for more of these growing innovative and successful businesses.

When demographer Bernard Salt was in my electorate recently, he described the Sunshine Coast as the entrepreneurial capital of the nation, and he is right. This government is doing all it can to encourage small business, and this motion is right to call on the people of Australia to join in with their purchasing decisions—that is, to buy locally. But members opposite should also remember this motion and do their bit by voting for the government's enterprise tax plan.

See this speech in context