Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

I indicate that the opposition will be supporting this amendment. We are extremely concerned about the impact on small businesses of this set of radical industrial relations changes. Indeed, in our own set of amendments we proposed for that reason that the threshold be set at 200 full-time equivalent employees. The minister laughed at that; he thought that was funny. We don't think it's funny that small businesses are facing the threat of getting dragged into extensive and onerous negotiation processes so that they are going to have to devote their time—the time of the owner who is also the chief information officer, also the chief financial officer, also the head of human resources, also the general counsel—to all of these functions for which large businesses have a team of specialists, and certainly industrial relations or workplace relations is one of those areas. In small business the entrepreneur who set up that business and is creating employment faces that burden on a daily basis because they have to do all of these other things. Around Australia there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of small businesses that now face the prospect of having to deal with the unions and the Fair Work Commission as compulsory participants in their business.

I absolutely endorse what the member for Mayo has said. The coalition is extremely concerned about the impact of these changes on small businesses. The mindset from those opposite is that every enterprise of any size has unlimited funds, unlimited resources, and all they need to do is get in there with a bit of persuasion from the CFMEU—'We've come around with our baseball bats to make you see reason.' They want to shake down businesses of all kinds. As far as they're concerned, businesses are endlessly profitable. Small businesses are run by proprietors who are working long hours, often working through the weekend, to give their employees opportunities.

There are so many stories of small business proprietors who, when times are tough, make sure that their employees get paid and continue to have a job, while the employer, the small business, might take an increase to their mortgage, might get extra finance to keep the business going. The member for Mallee brought together small businesses from her electorate just yesterday. I talked to a chocolate manufacturer who told me about the great work she's done building a business and how satisfying it is to be able to employ young people in her country town and give them employment opportunities.

Business owners like that around the country are facing significant threat and risk as a consequence of this intrusive legislation which is going to greatly expand the role of unions and bring them uninvited into small businesses around the country. This is a disastrously retrograde step. I absolutely endorse the observations of the member for Mayo about the perverse incentives that this now creates for small businesses to seek to shrink down below a threshold, leading to employment being lost—quite the opposite of the baseless claims that have been made by the government about the consequence of this legislation. So, the opposition will be supporting the amendment proposed by the member for Mayo.

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