Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

I would've! I would've visited others, too, but you weren't in the parliament at that time. I made sure that all of the seats that I represented, the businesses that we represent in this place, that others represent in this place, could use me as a conduit to what needed to happen for small business.

The small business minister currently asks what we did in 10 years for small business. Well, I'll give her a hint: it's about tax relief. It's about lowering the tax rate to the lowest point since around World War II. It dropped to 27½ per cent and is now 25 per cent, the lowest rate for small business. Do you know what that enables small-business people to do? It enables them to—

Thank you—I heard 'workers'. It means they can employ more workers. Isn't that fantastic? They can employ more workers. They can give more people the opportunity.

Those opposite talk a big game when they talk about small business. Sometimes the definition of a 'small business' was a large business when a coalition government was in government, and now that's been turned into a small business under those opposite. They've never seen a small business they wouldn't want to run a picket line out the front of. They've never seen a small business they wouldn't want to tax more. That's what we stand for: lower taxes. That is why the small business tax rate is the lowest it's been for more than three-quarters of a century, because of the policies of the coalition government, because of how we operate when we're in government.

I come to this debate with a bit of experience and knowledge, because I've run a small business, like the member for New England, and the members behind me. The member for Forrest ran a dairy farm for many years with her husband. This is what the small business community is all about. It's about having the experience of people who've taken that risk, put their life savings on the line, mortgaged their house and put themselves into debt up to their eyeballs and worked day and night to make that small business succeed and to get that small bit of advantage so they can employ more people. When a small-business person gets a little bit of tax relief, they don't put it in their own pockets, they don't take the holiday they deserve or want. They employ more people; they reinvest it in their small business. But those opposite wouldn't understand that, because most of them have never run a small business. Yes, they've worked for an ALP member. Yes, they've worked for a union. In the main, they are union apparatchiks when they come to this place, but we come from a business background.

Government members interjecting—

Well, I appreciate that there are probably one or two aberrations but, in the main, most of them are union apparatchiks.

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