Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party, Minister for Revenue and Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Tangney for his question, and what a great and passionate advocate he is for the small and medium-sized businesses in his electorate. I know because I've been able to walk around with him in his electorate and meet so many of those people.

I know he's particularly keen on small and family-sized enterprises like Joyce Kitchens—who, for over 20 years, have been building custom kitchens in his electorate and beyond, to help those people who want a new kitchen but also to employ many people in his electorate. This is the sort of business that is going to be impacted by Labor's hike on small and medium-sized enterprises and on those family businesses. In fact, 97 per cent of all businesses in this country are small and medium-sized businesses. That's why, on this side of the chamber, we are delivering tax relief for those businesses—for the more than 15,000 businesses in the seat of Tangney and the millions of other businesses throughout the country and the people that they employ.

But, of course, this would all change under the Leader of the Opposition, if he had his way, because the Leader of the Opposition has finally revealed his hand: he wants to punish those businesses. In his wacky captain's call yesterday, he said that Labor would roll back those tax cuts for small and medium-sized enterprises. He said that he would punish those businesses that to seek to employ, to invest, to grow and to hire more Australians. He has promised before that his tax policies simply focus on the top end of town. He has said that he is focused on the millionaires. But let me ask the Leader of the Opposition: how are small, medium-sized and family businesses the top end of town? How are the people that they employ millionaires? Of course, they are not. In a prepared speech, he had the audacity to say that he was going to back small business. In his prepared speech he said he would 'hug' small and medium-sized enterprises. He walks out the door, and then he mugs them. It is the 'hug and mug' that the Leader of the Opposition is so famous for. You only need to ask the workers that he represented—

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