Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to commend the member for Wentworth for her contribution. I was listening intently, and the member is right: unless there's a tough cop on the beat, it's not going to make a difference. It was a wonderful contribution explaining the importance of cash payments. When the member was talking about her mum, I had a flashback to my former boss, good friend and mentor Andrew Blain, who owned Yarra Valley Snack Foods, where I was lucky enough to work for seven years. He spoke to me about the importance of cash flow and used to always say, 'Aaron, just remember: a sale isn't a sale until we get paid.' That's the reality for small business. They don't have millions of dollars in cash reserves. They don't have money sitting there to afford it. On a balance sheet of assets, profit and loss is important, but the lifeblood of a small business is cash flow and having more cash in the bank to be able to pay your employees, pay your suppliers and survive.

The reality that we need to acknowledge for many small-business owners and family businesses across Casey and across the country is that, when they don't have the cash, the people that go without are the owners. The owners always pay themselves last. When they don't have the money, they will pay their employees, they will work with their suppliers and, many times, they will go weeks without payment themselves. So we need to do everything we can in this House to make sure that we're supporting small business, that we're creating the conditions for them to succeed and that, when they do make a sale to a big business, they get paid. I want to take a moment to thank all the small businesses in Casey and across the country for everything that they do. You are the engine room of the economy, you drive innovation, you drive economic growth and you take risks, in many cases putting your family house on the line to chase your dream. Our role and our responsibility is to make your life as easy as possible.

Governments should not be picking winners. Governments shouldn't be backing multinationals and billionaires. They should be focused on creating the economic conditions so small business can thrive. In my community and in many communities across the country, it's the small businesses that give so much back. Anyone who visits a sporting ground in their community will see that. They will see it on the signs around the boundary. Every one of those sponsors is a small and family business giving back to their community. I've seen lots of IGA signs at sporting clubs across my community. I've never seen a Woolworths or a Coles sign at a sporting club in my community. That's why we need to back small business.

I spent 15 years working with and in small businesses, dealing with companies like Woolworths and Coles. Let's understand some of the behaviour of these big businesses—some of the behaviour that we need to stamp out. I hope this legislation will have an important role in doing that. As one example, Woolworths and Coles, in their negotiations with small businesses, will say to them, 'We'll pay you within 90 days, but if you give us an extra per cent out of your margin, we'll pay you within 60 days. If you give us another per cent, we'll pay you within 30 days, and if you give us another per cent, we'll pay you within 14. Give us five per cent and we'll pay you within a week.'

Let's be clear about this behaviour: this is Woolworths and Coles using their market share to bully small businesses—small family food manufacturers trying to survive—and prop up their profits and their margins at the expense of those businesses. That is some of the behaviour that we are talking about. That is some of the behaviour that we need to eliminate, because, if small businesses don't have cash flow, they won't survive.

This is the most challenging time businesses have had. I was speaking recently to a business leader in my community, a man who is not prone to hyperbole or exaggeration. His family business has been operating for three generations. He's been in the business for over 37 years and he said to me that this is the toughest economic environment that he has endured. It is a time when revenues are coming down because people are spending less, and we saw that in the national accounts. Their revenues are less but their expenses are going up. Every expense is going up for them: their rents, their mortgages, their energy bills, their insurance, the raw materials that they're getting from suppliers. Everything is going up and, unfortunately, we're seeing that when we walk through our communities and there are empty shopfronts. We're seeing it in the insolvency numbers. We're seeing it every day. We know it's challenging for small businesses, and we think: what is the government doing to support small business?

I will always stand in this House and speak on any legislation to support small business, but I was thinking this week that it had been a while since I'd had the opportunity to speak on legislation about small business in this tough economic environment, so I asked my team to reach out to the Parliamentary Library to do a little bit of research. I asked them a simple question: how many pieces of legislation directly related to small business has the Minister for Small Business introduced into this House in the last two years? I was waiting to get that answer, and it shocked and disappointed me when I got the response from the Parliamentary Library, because the fact is that this is the first piece of legislation that the Minister for Small Business has brought to this House in two years.

We are two years into the Albanese Labor government. We are in an environment where small businesses are struggling, and they are getting no support from the government. This week the Parliamentary Library gave me the data that this is the first piece of legislation that is directly related to small business that the Minister for Small Business has brought to this House. We are two years into the government, and it shocks me.

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