Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Two big things happened in 1987. The first was that Western Australian, in Fremantle, hosted the America's Cup. That was a wonderful thing for Western Australia and this whole nation. The second thing that happened in 1987 was that Labor appointed a minister for small business. It didn't happen under the great hero Menzies. It didn't happen under Fraser. It didn't happen under Treasurer Howard. It was Labor that appointed the first minister for small business, because we have been an ongoing supporter of small business across this country, and we've acted time and time again. And then we get to the great lie of the Liberal Party. I'm not talking about the great lie of 'back in black' but the other great lie: that side say that they always back small business.

Well, let's look at what the so-called friends of small business actually do when they're in government. Firstly, they lie to small business about who is actually the Treasurer of the nation. They give small business secret ministries—secret ministries in resources. They leave small businesses of Australia, who pay tax, with $1 trillion of debt to pay back. Let's look at what they do for small businesses in the car industry. When they were last in office they closed the car industry, closing down small businesses who are reliant on the car industry. Then think about our small businesses who have to trade with our Pacific neighbours. That side chose to elect a leader who jokes about the Pacific Islands drowning. The list goes on. You won't be surprised. When it comes to people who are in small business who need to put their children into child care, they have to pay 41 per cent more because of the incompetence of the other side. When it comes to wasting money and restricting the way people can actually spend their money, they forced thousands of people onto cashless welfare, meaning that these people couldn't spend their money in small businesses—wasted $170 million.

But the waste goes on. For small business, many of them digital in this day and age—not the fax-machine side over there but those digital businesses we're trying to build—what sort of an NBN did they get from those opposite? They got tens of thousands of miles of copper, $128 billion wasted on the NBN—small businesses waiting to get more workers, a million people on the visa backlog, and small businesses with a secret 20 per cent energy price increase. And they changed the law to keep it secret until after the election. They wasted $100 million on sports rorts, shifting money from small businesses that could have been building sports infrastructure to marginal Liberal seats on colour coded spreadsheets. They wasted $20 billion on JobKeeper. And then when it came to the choice, when they were faced with the choice in Western Australia—do they back Western Australian small businesses or do they back Clive Palmer?—who did they choose? They chose Clive Palmer! Then, after they gave up on supporting Clive Palmer, what did they choose to do? They chose to write a million-dollar cheque—again, not a million-dollar cheque to the small businesses of Western Australia, no, but a million-dollar cheque to Clive Palmer to pay Clive Palmer's legal bills. But I shouldn't be that surprised. This is the same WA Liberal Party who tried to privatise Western Power, sending up power bills.

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