Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

It's gutsy to ask a question about Stuart and small business when they voted against helping small businesses with their energy bills. If you really cared about Stuart and his small business, you wouldn't have done that. Mr Speaker, they wouldn't have done that. So I think people see through these sorts of questions from those opposite. Those opposite couldn't give a stuff about people who are doing it tough. If they had their way, inflation would be higher, growth would be weaker and the budget would be in worse nick.

I say to Stuart, I say to the small-business people of this country, I say to families and pensioners right around Australia: we recognise that the economy is soft and that times are tough, but, more than that, we're responding in the budget with cost-of-living relief and support for small business. I'm asked about small business, and it's a perfect opportunity to tell everybody here and everybody who might be tuning in at home that, every time those opposite have had the opportunity in the Senate to vote for tax breaks for small businesses, they've been voting against them.

The thing about that which makes it particularly comical, from their point of view, is that on the same day that the Leader of the Opposition was giving his budget reply, talking about support for small business, they were in the Senate voting against helping small business by providing them a tax break. This is the kind of chaos and confusion and hypocrisy that we hear from those opposite on a daily basis.

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