Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party, Minister for Small and Family Business, the Workplace and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Brisbane for his question, and I sincerely hope he's not the only Trev from Queensland in this chamber in the not-too-distant future. I do thank him for his question on what is a great day for the taxpayers in his electorate. I note, for example, that a plumber earning $72,000 will save $530 a year. I congratulate the Treasurer, the Prime Minister and the Minister for Finance on the passage of the tax cuts. It is the latest in our plan and, at end of it, hopefully, there will be a great deal more money spent in small and family businesses. You hear the headline numbers all the time: the million jobs, with 420,000-odd in the last 12 months—the most ever and 80 per cent of them full-time. But the engine room of that is small and family business. Around 65 per cent of the private sector are employed there.

Since the election of the coalition government in 2013 we seen a net increase of 150,000 small and family businesses—businesses opening their doors and employing people. That's how you get the result. What was the comparable? In the last year of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government, 61,000 small and family businesses closed. That's the comparison that you've got here. That's why the plan that the Treasurer and the Prime Minister are implementing is so important. That's how you get the results. We often forget about unincorporated small and family businesses, but 350,000, along with 2.5 million people as wage-earners in Queensland, will benefit from this decision today, as of next year. That gets overlooked a lot. Those businesses too employ a vast number of people.

What will happen when there is more money in the pockets of wage-earners? This is the key. On this side of the House we believe that businesses that earn profits and wage-earners that earn their wage are the people best placed to decide how to spend it. What will wage-earners do with more money in their pockets? Over half of them, when surveyed, said they will spend it back in the local economy. What do the small businesses do? On average, of every local dollar spent in them, they themselves spend 42c of that back in the local economy.

What's the threat? What's the alternative? It is tax as far as the eye can see. Insert name of tax here, and the Labor Party and the Leader of the Opposition will increase it—be it on employees, be it on businesses, be it on retirees, be it on anyone that wants to get ahead. For anyone that's aspirational, they will find a way to stop it—along with their secret deals with their union mates, of course. For the sake of the country, the economy and the results that have been achieved, we must continue to deliver for those small and family businesses out there, not just in Brisbane but Australia wide.

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