Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

As has been said here, the coalition will be supporting the Treasury Laws Amendment (2022 Measures No. 2) Bill 2022 because it implements a number of very sensible measures of the previous coalition government. It is all about small business, as we've heard previously—the small businesses that employ the majority of Australians and do so very well in all of our small communities in particular.

We see in this bill a common-sense approach to the practical way that our small businesses work and the fact that they're often just a mum-and-dad business, two partners or an individual. That's why a practical approach to the Australian Taxation Office, as we see in the measures here, is so important. As we know, many of our small business owners don't have a massive HR department to work with them. They are everything. They often work all day in their business and sometimes at night as well. They're often in the role 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but they do an amazing job. I want to recognise those small businesses in our support of this bill, particularly those in small rural and regional communities.

Small businesses do a fantastic job of keeping those local economies ticking over, but what they also do, which is often unseen, is support every community service organisation, every one of our volunteer emergency service organisations, and our sporting and other organisations. Whenever local people need a donation, the first place they go to is a local small business. So anything we can do in this House to provide that additional support and to assist small businesses to manage their issues through the Australian Taxation Office is a very good, practical move because it reduces the amount of time that they need to spend on those matters and allows them to get on with what they're there to do, which is to run their business and work in that business and employ other Australians—such an important part of the role that they play. I see that in my own part of the world.

The bill deals with matters around the Australian Taxation Office, providing small businesses with additional support in dealing with the ATO appeals process and removing tax barriers to support sole traders and individuals looking to upskill—practical matters for small businesses. The bill supports gig-economy contractors and companies to manage their tax obligations and ensures that the ATO has the data it needs for accurate reporting. It puts in place important reforms to support the coalition's election commitment to support Australians over 55 to downsize their property and contribute to their super. The real key issue for me is the strong support for small business, though supporting retirees is absolutely very sensible, as are the reforms to super and the housing market.

I can recall in my time as an MP—which I think a number of members in this parliament would have done in their time as local members—an individual who got in touch with me two days before Christmas. He said, 'The ATO wants to take my house and my business, and I'll be out of business.' We had to work overtime to make sure that he connected with the right people in the ATO and was able to work through the issues that were on the table. It was about 18 months or two years later that I happened to run into him at a local service station. He bolted across to say, 'I am still in business and I still have my home.' I think that's one of the things that we get to do as local members: facilitating very sound discussions that enable people to stay in business and to work out their issues with the ATO, if they're able to connect with the right people and get a fair hearing about what they're dealing with. Much in this bill is related to that.

It is quite tough for a lot of small businesses to deal with the complexity that goes with dealing with the Australian Taxation Office, so there are a lot of benefits in this bill—even the one to seek orders from the AAT that stay or otherwise affect ATO debt-recovery actions while the small business is disputing the underlying tax assessment in the Small Business Taxation Division of the AAT. This reflects what I was talking about earlier, the issues facing a small business and the sense of panic they get if, particularly, they've inadvertently made an error or just need the right person to talk to to work through their issues.

I'm really proud of what we've done. This really helps resolve disputes in a timely and cost-effective way. Access to justice is a simple thing for small business. The previous speaker, the opposition whip, spoke about the coalition establishing the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman. I think that is a particularly important office. This advocate that small business now has with government and in the community is such an important role. I would encourage as many small businesses as possible—and it really doesn't matter what issue you're dealing with—that when they need assistance to get in touch with the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman. There are a lot of other areas that they can assist you with, not just in this space.

For many small businesses, resolving disputes through case management and referral to alternative dispute resolution are things that they get to deal with. Hopefully, that isn't very often, but when they do, they are time-poor and often don't know where to start. How about starting with the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman as a first point of call if they're not sure where to go? I imagine most of them work with their accountants and others but, in this instance, why not talk to the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman? If you're aware of a small business in this space, please tell them to get in touch for that purpose.

We bolstered mediation services within the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman and established the Small Business Taxation Dispute Division within the AAT. There's that importance of strengthening protections for small and family businesses from unfair contract terms, which happen on a regular basis. We've seen some move in that, particularly with small businesses in the agricultural sector, and changes for those who find themselves at the bottom end of supply and value chains. The work in the unfair contract terms space is very important. Being a dairy farmer myself, over the years I've understood some of the challenges of having a perishable product and being in that position. It's a huge challenge for small business, particularly in the rural and agricultural sector. So I'm very proud of our ongoing support for small business.

There was also the instant asset write-off which we introduced and the number of small businesses which were able to take advantage of that. I'm very proud of our ongoing support for small business and the number of small businesses that were able to take advantage of the instant asset write-off that we introduced, whether it was a local small business such as a café or even a pizza shop. The local guys who are livestock transporters were able to use the instant asset write-off to buy themselves the new gear that they were desperately needing. If you consider the number of small businesses that really took advantage of this during COVID, they were the ones who were still open, and they were mostly, in many instances, small businesses that did everything they could to keep their communities ticking over.

In a little place called Nannup, in my electorate, the local supermarket, of course, had real struggles. You were allocated certain numbers of items, and they had limited access to the one thing we saw so much hoarding off, which was toilet paper. Here was this little business in a tiny community, and one of the local people came and saw Joyce at the store and said, 'What are you short of?' She said, 'This is something we're struggling to get hold of because we're limited to what we can have.' So this gentleman drove a couple of hours to where there were supplies. He bought the supplies back to Nannup and said to Joyce, 'Tell me who's been in who desperately needs some of these.' He went around and dropped them off on the front doorstep, safely, of these premises for the people who couldn't access them. That's the strength, that's what happens with small business and that's what happens with good people in local communities.

During COVID, people come from major populated areas into small communities looking for certain products. My own local supermarket said: 'Nola, stop panicking. We've got some supplies out the back. For all of our regular, particularly mature-age, customers, we're making sure that that one packet of flour or sugar or the things that they buy every week are kept available—for the people who need them most, the people in our small communities.' That's the value of small community business. That's why I'm very proud of all the measures that we took in our time in government to support small business, and I know that we'll be continuing to work in every way we can to support small business.

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