Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The Treasury Laws Amendment (Financial Market Infrastructure and Other Measures) Bill 2024 is one of the biggest changes to company reporting in a generation. This bill is going to change our way of life. It's going to cost more money to live. In the middle of a difficult cost-of-living crisis, the government has brought in this bill which will only worsen the cost of living. Any business above $50 million will have to provide an annual report around scope 3 emissions. Farmers will have to disclose all emissions to the bank. If they get this wrong they could be sued by ASIC and by the Environmental Defenders Office. All of these costs will be passed onto small- and medium-sized businesses. Guess what? They pass them all on to consumers and customers in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, if they get it right. If they don't get it right they get fined. This is a big risk.

The coalition will be moving amendments later in this debate on this bill. If those amendments are not accepted by the House, we will oppose this bill. This is not about being pro or anti-climate; it's about being pro small and family business, the backbone of this country that employs so many people. This bill puts an unacceptable compliance burden on the Australian economy at a time when government is claiming it will actually reduce it. What we're actually seeing is that compliance is going up. Red tape is going up. Costs are going up. That's what businesses are telling us right around the country. The bill is at odds with our peers—the United States of America, the UK and Canada—who aren't going to the extremes of this bill. This bill is a risk to small businesses and to those who contract with them. The bill risks accelerating the trend of debanking. We are seeing among our farmers, miners and resources industry that this is happening.

What is debanking? It is also known within the banking industry as derisking. It is the closure of people's or organisation's bank accounts by banks that perceive the account holders to pose a financial, legal, regulatory or reputational risk to the bank. This is a big issue. We believe that this will have an impact—higher costs—on the Australian economy when we can least afford it. We believe that this bill is basically a green tape bomb; it's going to add costs. Treasury's own figures say that this measure will cost $1.3 million per year for businesses to comply with. These are higher compliance costs than similar schemes, as I said, in other comparative countries like the US or our friends in New Zealand or the UK.

The inclusion of scope 3 emissions and the enforcement regime mean that big companies have to report. They will have to pass the risk down their supply chain to small business customers and that means, if you're a farmer or a big company, you would have to disclose what you're doing. A cafe owner selling coffee in the lobby of a big company in the middle of the city would have to disclose what they're doing. A building supplier providing office fit outs to a big company would have to disclose. A manufacturer buying ingredients or components from a big company would have to disclose. And we have already seen manufacturing jobs fall by about 10 per cent under this government. The minister here at the table said in question time just a few weeks ago that we have about 900,000 jobs in manufacturing. Guess what? During COVID there were a million jobs in manufacturing, so there has been a 10 per cent fall and this will only make it worse.

Labor is funding the environmental activists, like the Environmental Defenders Office, to ensure that this happens—to make sure, through these costs, that they are held accountable. ASIC has made it clear in its evidence to the Senate Economics Committee that these compliant costs will be passed onto small businesses. ASIC has confirmed that these concerns are so extensive that they have been raised with ASIC by the Australian small business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman. Labor needs to see sense here. Taxing business, even if they're big business worth over $50 million—guess what? It's all passed on to the small businesses, and then it's passed on to the mum-and-dads, the people in the gallery and the people that we represent here.

At a time when almost 16,000 businesses have gone into insolvency since Labor came to office—just two years—this is the wrong law at the wrong time. There is a better way. I would just note that the compliance cost is particularly onerous and that 75 per cent of ASX listed companies already voluntarily disclose climate related information to investors because they see a commercial benefit in doing so.

The coalition will make it easier. If we're given the opportunity to govern in 12 months time, the coalition will make it easier to do business, partly because we have a leader—the Leader of the Opposition—who has run small and family business. His father runs small and family business. He understands what it is to employ someone and how to make sure that the economy grows.

The coalition wants to boost productivity. We have seen productivity fall through the floor in the last two years under this government, and this government says very, very little about it. You don't hear the Treasurer talking about how productivity has fallen. When productivity falls, guess what? It all adds to inflation. All the costs are going up at the moment. People know it, whether it's food, electricity, rent or mortgages. Since the coalition left office, everyone's mortgage has gone through the roof. If you're renting, guess what? Your rents have gone through the roof as well. In last night's budget, the Commonwealth rent assistance has gone up $25 or something—from $90 to $125. Meanwhile, their rents have gone up 100 bucks a week. That's the reality, and this mob aren't listening.

Independent researchers put the cost of red tape to the economy at more than $176 billion a year. We're completely overregulated in some areas, and this government is making it worse and worse and worse. Small businesses, as I said, bear the brunt of this. They don't have the human resource departments that big companies have. Often, in a small business, it's the owner of the business, the husband or wife, the kids maybe, the uncle—you might have two or three people in the business that actually are doing the lot. They're actually selling, they're chasing up finances, they're employing, and they're doing payroll, accounts payable or accounts receivable. They don't have human resources to pass on scope 3 emissions to bigger companies. And the instant asset write-off? One thing we'll do there is make sure the instant asset write-off is decent. In the budget last night, they put the instant asset write-off at $20,000. What a joke! You can't buy any sort of vehicle for under 20 grand. It used to be unlimited under the coalition.

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