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

The member for Bass gets it. You're right, Attorney-General. In the member for Maribyrnong's seat, there is a family-run, independent supermarket business. It's a third-generation family business. It has been there for over 50 years. It has 140 staff, with 40 of them full time and 100 of them part time, predominantly schoolkids and university students. They turn over a tick over $20 million a year. They operate at a gross margin of around two per cent. They compete with Coles and Woolworths on a daily basis. The Leader of the Opposition would have you believe that that is a business, already facing a national giant, that does not deserve to keep more of its own generated profits.

The Leader of the Opposition is happy to trash businesses in pursuit a class war. He does not understand that high turnovers don't necessarily mean high profits, because he has never been involved in a business or the running of a business. There are businesses all over his electorate, and every electorate of every member in this country, where that equation is the same. They are the backbone of all our seats. The Leader of the Opposition has gone over the top. He's out of the trench, head first into battle against this sector of the economy. My question to those opposite—I don't have to ask it on this side, just of those opposite—especially those in the economic leadership team, is whether they have the courage to stand up for this most important sector of our economy. Those businesses are in all of your seats. They employ an overwhelming majority—70 per cent—of Australians. Do not stand behind your leader and sell them out for the sake of a cheap political class war.

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