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

Australian small and family businesses are the backbone our economy. Small businesses makes up over 97 per cent of all businesses. They employ over 4.7 million people and 41 per cent of the business workforce, making them, collectively, Australia's biggest employer. The data shows an upward trend in the proportion of women small-business owners and managers over the last 20 years, and an increase in the number of both full-time and part-time women small-business owners and managers. Indeed, as of July 2020, almost 715,000 women were business owners or managers, including 381,000 part-time and almost 334,000 full-time.

On this side of the House, we are consistent friends and supporters of small business. We don't just say it; we back it. In government, we reduced small business taxes, we introduced tax concessions to help small businesses generate investment, we backed small businesses to get through the pandemic and we helped small businesses as they recovered.

By contrast—and the contrast could not be more stark—the Labor government, the Albanese government, is taking a sledgehammer to small business. We are seeing the biggest changes proposed to industrial relations law in decades. This government of union officials now at the second stage of their career, this government is recklessly imposing union control and inviting—indeed, encouraging—militant union officials to come into the offices and premises of hardworking Australians, small and family businesses, all across the country. How are they doing that? They are doing it through damaging, union-driven imposts on businesses, such as imposing compulsory multi-employer bargaining enabling businesses to be covered under bargaining without their consent; by giving unions new powers, including forcing an employer to bargain for a replacement agreement, even if the employer and the majority of its employees do not wish to bargain; and vetoing an agreement reached by an employer and the majority of its employees to remove themselves by coverage of an agreement. These are powers this bill gives to the unions, the Labor government's paymasters.

A consequence of this bill that is extraordinarily troubling for small businesses all around Australia is that this bill, should it pass into law, will require small business owners—and let's remember, they almost always work in the business themselves—to spend substantial amounts of time away from their work, away from serving customers so that they can negotiate a joint bargaining position with other employers—many of which will have fundamentally different businesses—and then they will need to negotiate with employees and union representatives, who will have significantly more time to dedicate to this process than will those small business proprietors.

At the end of all of that exercise and provision of time and money and effort and stress all taking that small business owner away from dealing with their customers, serving their customers, that small business will be forced into a multi-employer agreement which will undoubtedly take on a one-size-fits-all approach and which will not be relevant to the specific conditions of that business.

I look at my colleagues on this side of the House, many of whom have worked in small businesses for years, have built up small businesses, have provided employment, have served their community, have served their customers. They and the small business people they have worked with around Australia know what a serious threat this bill presents to small business.

This bill introduced by this government is dancing to the tune of their union pay masters, marching and inviting unionists through the doors of small businesses all around this country. This is a not-so-subtle effort by this government to increase trade union membership under the guise of sustainable wage growth. This is a bill which implements a union agenda to increase the powers and the reach of unions, including into small businesses across the country.

What did the Franchise Council of Australia say to the Senate inquiry? It said: 'We would suggest union involvement in small businesses—ultimately it may undermine the sustainability or viability of many small businesses, which undermines the viability of jobs …' That is the consequence of a bill which is going to give unions a foothold in small businesses, as those small businesses are compulsorily roped into a bargaining process they had not asked for, they did not seek, and face the consequence of adverse terms and conditions being imposed upon them.

We have seen a very limited exemption from this government in this bill, with the definition of 'small business' as one being one with fewer than 15 employees. But when you look at the details, if you have a cafe that has a significant number of people, often young people working one shift on a Saturday or Sunday, you can very readily get to 15, because it is not 15 full-time equivalent; it is 15.

We on this side proposed an amendment to deal with this. We proposed an increase to 100 full-time equivalent employees, which was rejected out of hand by the government, and they were quickly on the phone to the ACTU to check out what their instructions were. They were: 'No, we're not having it'—the modern equivalent to the faceless men of the 1960s. That is the way this Albanese Labor government is working. It is implementing the agenda of the union movement for thugs and the criminals in the CFMEU. They are now on the speed dial of ministers in this government.

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