Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health, Aged Care and Indigenous Health Services) Share this | Hansard source

I am honoured today that I am able to speak on the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Small Business Redundancy Exemption) Bill 2023. It means a lot to the people I represent within the great electorate of Braddon in the north-west, on the west coast and on King Island in Tasmania. In doing so, I also bring to the floor 18 to 20 years of experience as an agricultural contractor. I employed at one time up to 28 employees, some of whom were contractors themselves in their own right. The reason we did that was to allow them flexibility and the ability to operate within the legislation that existed. They could choose their own path forward. They could pick and choose which direction they wanted to take their own businesses. They could allow their families to have flexibility as far as lifestyle choices were concerned. They could take a week off and take the family camping, fishing or whatever great pursuit they wanted to do in the great state of Tasmania. It allowed them the flexibility.

The other thing it did was allow them flexibility around capital. When you're starting out in a contracting business, there are many overheads that need to be paid for. That all requires money, and normally it requires debt. It's a hell of a risk when a young person or a young couple start a business in the construction industry or in the agricultural sector. They have to take a path on which they have never trodden before. It's the unknown in a lot of cases. At least having flexibility, the ability to control one's own destiny, allows them the confidence that they need to, firstly, go about taking up that new pursuit. Secondly, once you start borrowing capital, again you are at the mercy of your own work ethic when it comes to paying that debt back. Debt for me as a small-business operator was like a noose around my neck. I could never really breathe easily until that debt was paid off. It's those contractors, it is those mum and dad businesses, that I'm talking about today. I do so, as I said, from experience.

When it comes to this amendment in this particular bill, as far as I'm concerned, it's a no-brainer. I recently visited the Master Builders Association in a place called Devonport on the north-west coast. They told me with great vengeance and furious anger how much disappointment they had about your bill, Minister. I'm sorry to bring that terrible news from Tasmania, but they are not fans. The pertinent point they had on this particular part of the legislation is that unscrupulous operators could manipulate the legislation in order to rip workers off.

Let me talk to you about that for a second. Let me talk to you about the wrong impression that some people, particularly on the other side, have in relation to employers, people who employ people. I can tell you from experience that most of the people that I represent fit into this category. They would give their right arm and their right leg for their employees. I know in my particular case I would treat them like my own children. I knew full well that, if I didn't, I wouldn't have a business. I knew that the money that I paid them each week would go a lot further if they were willing to do their utmost for me. It was a mutual arrangement. At Christmas time, I used to kill a cow and cut into all the cuts, and I would give that to the families. They would put those in their freezers and that would feed some of those families for most of the year. I didn't charge them for that. I could have bought them a gold watch or given them $1,000, but where would that have gone? Instead, I decided to do something that looked after their families.

I can remember lending my employees money to buy their first homes, and they could pay me back whenever they liked. I remember one particular fellow had trouble with his daughter, who had a peculiar illness that needed specialist work in Melbourne on the mainland. I paid for that. I just said to that young bloke, 'You can pay me back when you get a chance, tiger.' And he certainly did. He was with me until the time I sold that particular business. The point I'm making, and the reason I'm telling you these stories, is that 99.9 per cent of our employers out there care very deeply about their people. I want to make that very clear here today. This particular amendment goes to augmenting, supporting and reinforcing that so that unscrupulous operators, as I've said previously, don't have the opportunity to rip off their workers.

When it comes to the small-business capital that is the north-west coast of Tasmania—and, just on that, the way Tasmania works is that, geographically, it's shaped like a funnel. The money is earned up the top in places like Bass and Braddon, and then it trickles down south and ends up in Hobart. Who knows what they do with it down there! But, nevertheless, the north-west, the west coast and King Island are the engine room of our small-business economy. These aren't big businesses, they're small- to medium-sized businesses—mum-and-dad businesses. They're sole traders and partnerships; people who get in and have a go. The point I'm making about difficult parts of legislation, when something like an omnibus bill turns into legislation, is from my own particular case. Normally, it's my wife who would look after that, who would sort through that legislation and do all the paperwork while I was busy in the truck or the tractor, or doing something manual. However, when my wife has to do that then that's 50 per cent of the business taking it's eyes off the road; 50 per cent of the business stops being effective and now has to concentrate on copious amounts of litigious protocol just to go about the business and do the job.

The other thing that weighs on the hearts and minds of my small-business operators is the punitive arrangements if you make a mistake. Invariably, that's what happens in small business: mistakes happen. There may be a number filled in the wrong column or an error that's made. The mens rea—the criminal intent—isn't necessarily there. So we need to have provisions within this legislation and this compliance which allow for mistakes to happen. I would rather an outcome-driven philosophy where we tell people how they can do something rather than tell them what they can't do. This is exactly where we're coming from here with this particular amendment. It's exactly the premise and rationale we had when we put this up: that we look after our small-business operators—we give them confidence and we allow them the flexibility they need to go about their business.

Again, what those opposite need to understand—what everybody in this place needs to understand—is that business is tough. We can start talking about the cost of living, but it isn't just that; it's the cost of doing business as well. Everything small-business operators touch, everything they're involved in, has gone up exponentially when it comes to the cost of living and inflationary pressures. We can talk about the cost of energy or the cost of fuel, or we can talk about primary production costs that are passed down through the supply chain to the end user. Or we can talk about the isolated nature of Tasmania—the fact that it's an island some nautical miles south of the mainland, requiring extensive shipping costs in order to get freight there and to get product from the farms and primary production regions onto the mainland itself. It's an expensive place to do business.

The other thing that happens, particularly in my region, is that there aren't necessarily the support mechanisms for contractors and small-business owners. They can't simply go to a lobby group, a support mechanism or someone who looks after their particular industry because they don't have the scale and critical mass necessary to have that support measure. Often, they're by themselves and don't have that support. As far as I'm concerned, that's what my job is. I'm there to support them. I'm the bloke who they ring and who they trust. And they've rung me and told me—and they've looked in my eye and said—that they don't like this bill, particularly this part of this bill, and that this amendment will certainly go a long way to remedy that. It will support our workers and put the focus back onto the workers, where it really should be.

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