Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I've sat and listened to many of the speakers on this side and on the other side of the floor talking about how important businesses are—that they're the backbone of our communities. The truth is, in regional and rural areas, they are. They put the food on the table for our mums and dads. They put the money through the economy. If not for them, we would not have our smaller regional and rural communities.

I've heard people talk about 'real people'. Well, can I give you some real examples of how tough it is out there for people in regional and rural Australia—firstly, Wicked Elf Beer. Wicked Elf was a brewery in Port Macquarie. It had been there for about 12 years. They closed this year because their electricity bill was higher than their rent. They had a warehouse, a place 10 times the size of this room here. They had invested tens of millions of dollars into that business over the dozen years that they operated. But because of this government's policies, they saw their power prices increase by more than 150 per cent, and they had to close down. So they sacked people; they lost jobs. And part of Port Macquarie lost a community that had been established there for many years.

Then there is the Dorrigo hotel. The owner there got in contact with me and said: 'Pat, I just got my forecast for contract for the next year. It has gone up by $25,000.' Now, Dorrigo, if you don't know it, is a small country town. Tourists come in and out. The Dorrigo hotel is a small pub. So, that's somebody's wage in Dorrigo. It's a lower socioeconomic area. Where are they going to find the money to pay that additional $25,000? Either they're going to have to put somebody off, and the boss will have to get on the taps, or they'll have to put the prices up, which then affects the community of Dorrigo and surrounds. And people are doing it tough. The farmers around there are doing it tough, because their electricity prices have gone through the roof. The cost of living has gone through the roof. Gas prices are up by over 30 per cent. And this is all because of this government's policies.

Labor members over there are speaking out of both sides of their mouths saying how much they support local businesses, yet they are silent on these cost increases. Not one member has talked about the Prime Minister's promise to reduce bills by $275: 'Oh, no: we've reduced it by $300'—after the subsidy, because prices have gone up by, on average, $1,000. It's smoke and mirrors.

If Labor indeed supported small businesses, they wouldn't have tied small businesses up in knots by, for example, legislating to have a union member be able to come into your business on a suspicion that you may not be paying your workers correctly—a suspicion. At least in my 12 years in the Police Force, it was a reasonable suspicion. You had to hold a reasonable suspicion to go and get a warrant, and then you had to go in front of a judge and plead your case: 'I want to enter this person's personal home or this person's business. I have to have reasonable grounds, and a judge has to agree with those reasonable grounds.' Nup: 'I'm a union member. I have a suspicion. So I am coming in. I don't need anyone else's permission. I'm coming in to hammer you.' These mum-and-dad small businesses don't have the ability to go and get lawyers or people to sit with the union member for days at a time. They have to go through this by themselves. And what happens there?

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