Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure that I rise to support the motion by the member for Brisbane on supporting small business. I congratulate the member for Brisbane for bringing this important motion to the House. As the member for Brisbane put it, our last two budgets have clearly demonstrated our commitment to and achievement in helping Australian small business grow and prosper. As we see small business as the engine room of our economy, it is important to recognise that it is the coalition government that is seeking to identify opportunities, recognise the importance of small business and support it to grow and prosper. We know that, by backing small businesses to succeed, it will help our economy grow and create more jobs. That is the rationale for the 10-year enterprise tax plan. It is designed so that, in its initial stages of implementation, it focuses on assisting the small business sector. It is vital that we give Australian small business every opportunity to invest, innovate, grow and employ Australians.

As the member for Brisbane touched on, if only a fraction of the small businesses in our economy employed one more person, the change to the unemployment rate would be a very significant reduction. We need a tax system that supports the enterprise of these hardworking mums and dads who own these small businesses in our community, because we want them to invest. We want them to grow their businesses. As somebody who was a businessperson prior to coming into politics, I recognise the importance of how businesses can grow with the assistance of capital and building the right staff and right team around you as you invest and grow.

We want to ensure that Australia continues to be an attractive place to do business. We do not want to lose the opportunities, talents and skills we have in this country overseas. We want our businesses to grow and develop so they can employ that skill, talent and capability here in Australia. As part of that, it is important that we manage the process of moving to a more diversified economy. As I said last week about the amendments to the Singapore free trade agreement, we are seeing increasingly that it is not manufactured goods export, as it was historically. It is now about professional services—education, accounting, legal services. The skills and abilities we have in Australia are being increasingly recognised overseas.

These changes we are looking to make to the tax system—and, by extension, regulation and other measures that we have had in the past couple of budgets—are so important, because they create that framework and incentive for small business here in Australia to grow, develop and expand their horizons overseas. I see that with many of the small businesses in my electorate of Forde: their willingness to take on opportunities overseas that allow them to grow the business here and employ more people locally. Where those businesses have in the past gone to China to manufacture, interestingly, they are now increasingly repatriating those manufacturing capabilities to Australia. In part, it is to protect their intellectual property, because they are finding manufacturing overseas can put at risk the integrity of their intellectual property rights in the manufacturing process. As we see that change, over time, we want to create as a government the opportunity for those businesses and the incentive for those businesses to come back here to Australia, because it is through that process that they are creating jobs in our local economy.

That is where, in this debate about global taxation, as other countries lower tax rates we have to ensure as a country that we are competitive in a global marketplace. As the member for Brisbane and others on this side of politics will recognise who have been in business, it is a global marketplace we are now competing in. So it is through the measures of this government that we are looking to create that framework, that opportunity, for our business sector to grow, prosper and employ more and more Australians.

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