Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I note the comments that have been made just now by the member for Brisbane. I simply make this point: it is now 12 months and one day since the government announced these measures for relief for small businesses—the energy investment relief and the $20,000 instant cash write-off. It was the reasonable expectation of small businesses around the country—their advisers and associations—that a measure such as this, which enjoys wide support within the business community and presumably within the parliament as well, that it would be swiftly legislated. As soon as was possible, the legislation was introduced into the House, and it moved through this place and was introduced into the other place.

I can understand members of the other place always wanting to do more. But what we've done in this bill is strike the right balance between providing support for small businesses in a timely fashion and incentivising investments in energy-saving technologies but also enabling businesses to make modest investments in the security and knowledge that they'll have the $20,000 instant write-off available to them. We announced in last night's budget that we intend to extend this measure for another 12 months, and legislation will be introduced to enable it to be extended for another 12 months. The right, good and just thing for this House to do is to ensure that the measures already announced can be enacted and that the new measures can be introduced into this place and enacted to provide certainty and security for small businesses. We all want to ensure that small businesses can invest in the sorts of energy-saving technologies that will be good for their business, saving them money on power bills, but also good for the environment. We all want to ensure that they can make investments with the certainty—on the basis of the advice that they get from their accountants and others—that they'll be able to get the tax relief available to them. Let's do the right thing: let's get this measure enacted now, and then we can move on to the measures that were announced in last night's budget.

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