Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

The Payment Times Reporting Bill 2020 does two really sensible things to support Australian small business: first, it provides greater transparency of payment terms in a bid to improve them for small businesses in the future; second, it helps businesses anticipate cash flow when engaging with larger businesses and government. The bill acknowledges a simple reality that every small-business owner in Australia already knows—small businesses often operate with thin margins and a tight cash flow and therefore are extremely vulnerable when expected revenues fail to arrive. I commend this bill to the House and I will vote in favour. However, I feel compelled to point out a deep inconsistency in the government putting forward this bill after such long delays in providing financial support to people and small businesses after the 'black summer' bushfires we just went through.

Those of us on the ground in bushfire zones knew by the last week of December that we were in the middle of a nightmare bushfire season. By the first week of January, the national parks had all shut, the tourist trade was well and truly dead and huge swathes of my electorate of Indi were on fire, like many places across the country. On 20 January, the Prime Minister announced $50,000 grants to businesses that had been directly hit by fire and $500,000 loans for businesses that had suffered asset or revenue loss. This was very welcome. But there was nothing here for businesses that had lost all their revenue but hadn't been directly touched by flames.

Many businesses in Indi, in places like Bright, Mansfield and the alpine resorts, take a huge portion of their annual income in January, some up to 60 or 70 per cent. This was wiped out. But, after the greatest natural disaster in the country's history, there was nothing for them. It wasn't until 11 March that the government came to the table with support for these businesses, announcing a new $10,000 small business support grant for businesses that had suffered a significant loss of income. The date of 11 March was already some 10 weeks after many of these businesses had lost all of their income. This was welcome; I welcomed it. But it was only made available to businesses in the Towong and Alpine shires in my electorate. The shires of Indigo, Wangaratta and Mansfield, which were jammed right between the burnt areas and devastated by the loss of tourist trade from the fires, were excluded. Some properties in the King Valley, in the rural city of Wangaratta, had even been directly impacted by fire. But still, because of their postcode, they missed out.

This omission was compounded by a refusal to explain why the decision was made. What were the rules? To this day, the government has not explained on what evidence it made the decision to exclude Indigo, Wangaratta and Mansfield. Anyone who'd visited the region would know that excluding these towns was madness. That day, 11 March, I started lobbying the Commonwealth and state governments to fix this oversight. In April, I conducted a survey of small businesses in Indi to understand the impact of our double crises of bushfires and COVID. The results were stark. They showed bushfire affected regions were particularly struggling. On average, businesses had lost 70 per cent of their revenue. A third of businesses had lost all of their revenue. I sent these results to the Treasurer. In fact, I took them there personally, once again imploring him to provide the promise to support small businesses in bushfire recovery.

But it was not until last week, 2 June, that the government finally came to the table and extended the $10,000 grants to all bushfire affected areas in Indi. Again, this was really welcome news. But for many, it was six months too late. The mayor of Indigo shire told me last week that, in the days before this grant was extended, several businesses in Beechworth had shut up shop forever. Two days before the announcement, I visited businesses on the Mansfield high street to hear how the fires had impacted them. Businesses like the Mansfield Hotel had lost their entire summer trade, and this was before they were shut down with COVID.

So this bill appearing before us today puzzles me a little bit. The government clearly understands that small businesses are vulnerable even to small delays in cash flow. And yet the government itself forced businesses to wait for over six months before they could even apply to access support after the bushfires.

I see my role as an Independent to be neither an uncritical cheerleader nor an unrepentant critic of the government. I see my job as being able to celebrate good work where it's done, and there has been plenty of good work done. But I see my job as being able to call out where more work is needed for my constituents. And I fear that the concern for supporting small businesses that is so evident in this bill has not so far been demonstrated adequately in the bushfire recovery.

But the campaign that we began on 11 March, when most of Indi's small businesses were excluded from bushfire support, is now won. These businesses can now apply for this much needed funding. So now we must turn to the next step in supporting small businesses through the challenging months ahead. In the coming weeks and months, I expect the government to provide a bit of payment transparency on three already announced schemes to support small businesses in bushfire affected areas.

On 19 January, the government announced $76 million for tourism for bushfire areas. That will be six months ago next week and there is still little clarity on how that money will be spent. I checked the National Bushfire Recovery Agency website this morning, and I found that just seven per cent of this money has been spent. Moreover, the NBRA website refers to a domestic tourism campaign called Live from Aus, but when I checked the link to Live from Aus I found that the campaign is almost totally unrelated to the bushfires. The campaign features ads, for instance, about brekky bowls with a chef from Bondi Beach, golf courses in the Melbourne bayside suburbs and underwater Great Barrier Reef tours. As far as I know, neither Bondi Beach nor Melbourne's bayside suburbs were hit by bushfires, and whilst we all know that the reef is boiling I truly doubt it was ever on fire. These are all worthy causes, and obviously coronavirus has hit tourism. A tourism push for all of these places is completely worthy, and we should be investing in tourism for all parts of Australia. I've been assured by the NBRA when I have asked them about this specifically: they said, 'No, we're not funding tourism campaigns outside bushfire areas,' but, as I said, I'm looking for transparency, and right now on the NBRA website this is where it takes you—Live from Aus.

When he launched the bushfire tourism scheme the Prime Minister said it would 'tap into the Australian desire to contribute to the bushfire recovery effort by encouraging Aussies to holiday in Australia and provide support to affected communities and regions'. From that perspective, I would expect that all the money put aside for bushfire recovery in tourism should be going to those regions. This bill talks about transparency with payment times, but what about some transparency for getting money to tourism businesses in bushfire regions? I'd really like to see that. I'd like to see the NBRA absolutely trumpeting a domestic tourism campaign focused on bushfire affected communities, places like those in my electorate, places like Beechworth and Mansfield, not Bondi and Brighton.

With the 93 per cent of funding still sitting there, we need a tourism campaign focused on Bega, on Eden, on Batemans Bay, on Mallacoota and of course on the many beautiful towns in Indi that I am so fond of and represent. Part of this money should be going to local tourism bodies to ensure that local ideas can get a guernsey. Tourism North East has developed a pitch for a $750,000 digital commerce platform that would build the resilience of local tourism businesses across Indi by helping them to connect with their customers. This is exactly the type of long-term investment we should be using this tourism money for.

But tourism based small businesses aren't the only ones still waiting for money to materialise. In February I took a proposal to the government to support forestry businesses in the north-east. On 11 May the government announced some money, but they have since provided zero details about how it's going to be spent and where it's going to go. We need transparency; we need detail. On the same day, 11 May, the government announced $448 million for local economic recovery plans, or LERPs, as they're called, for bushfire affected areas. But again there is no detail about which places will get how much funding. It does appear that, yet again, places like Mansfield may miss out on this funding, despite being extremely hard hit by the loss of tourism trade. Again, we're in June now. We need transparency; we need to get on with it.

This bill aims to provide transparency on how quickly government agencies pay small businesses for their services. As I said, I commend the bill, I support it and I will vote for it. But if this test were applied to the bushfire funding I fear that the government would not be receiving a very high mark. So while I commend this bill to the House, I implore the government to get serious about getting bushfire money out the door and to where it's really needed.

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