Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Small business is the core of Australia’s economy. Three-quarters of a million Australian small businesses employ 4.1 million Australians. There are 1.1 million non-employing small businesses, many of them independent contractors who are former employees and may eventually take on employees of their own. These businesses deserve our support—and, indeed, Indigenous Australians deserve our support to start their own businesses. As the Open for business: developing Indigenous enterprises in Australia report states:

In 2006, six per cent of employed Indigenous people indicated they worked in their own business. This compares with 17 per cent of employed non Indigenous people.

The proportion of employed Indigenous people who worked in their own business ranges from seven per cent in major cities to two per cent in remote areas.

Business involves risk, as do all endeavours, and, while the research clearly shows that only one-third of small businesses make it to the 15-year mark, without them Australia would be in significant economic trouble. Small business is, as they say, the engine room of the nation. As you would know, Madam Deputy Speaker, the electorate of Fadden joined with those of Moncrieff and McPherson represents the small-business half of the nation. As the founder of my own business, and after nine years growing it into a truly national firm, I understand the risks and I certainly understand the rewards that come from a successful small business. I also understand that founding and developing a business and going through the challenges, meeting the risks and dealing with the red tape and all of the issues that business confronts you with is difficult. It demands tremendous risk-taking, it demands resourcefulness, it demands courage, especially in the early days, and it demands an enormous amount of hard work. It demands patience, it demands great levels of communication and skill and, at the end of the day, it demands the perseverance to keep going when all around may tell you to stop.

Across the nation there are a great range of Indigenous businesses and Indigenous people behind them keen to build those businesses, keen to take advantage of strengths and look to the future, with a resolve to face the hardships, face the risks and persevere until they have achieved what they set out to do. Indigenous self-employment and participation in the ownership of Indigenous enterprises enable individuals, families and ultimately communities to reduce reliance on government assistance and to improve their overall sense of self-sufficiency. To see members of their community striving to succeed in the business world can only help to provide additional role models for young people, as it does in the broader community. Despair breeds despair; success lifts all around it. Likewise, successful Indigenous enterprises help to strengthen employment, improve the local economy and help local people develop their skills.

I can testify to this personally, having lived for 12 months in the Torres Strait and worked throughout all of the 12 Torres Strait Islander communities on the 11 inhabited islands of the Torres Strait. I can see the many Indigenous enterprises thriving, and the men and women driving those enterprises seeing the success and the fruit of their labours. Many Indigenous businesses already have a head start in various industries—the competitive advantage some Indigenous communities already enjoy include culture based industries, the tourism sector or industries that are location or land based such as land and resource management, and of course a range of service opportunities around the mining sector.

The aim of increasing and strengthening Indigenous businesses is certainly a noble one and may be a key to partly addressing Indigenous disadvantage, which the parliament is so acutely aware of. There are opportunities out there that with the right support could and should flourish. With the right support Indigenous businesses need not just solely be not-for-profit, community owned or government subsidised. With the right support we could and should see a huge diversity of Indigenous businesses not only servicing other Indigenous areas, communities or people but the broader community as a whole.

While many Indigenous business remain not-for-profit, community owned or government subsidised there is no reason that this must be the case and that Indigenous businesses could not be supported and encouraged to operate in the normal free market as other businesses continue to do. Indigenous businesses should be supported, especially to become for-profit based. The coalition supports those recommendations that will lead to wider awareness of Aboriginal business successes and especially the recommendations which aim to create more for-profit business for Aboriginal people whether they be sole traders, members of partnerships or individual shareholders.

The coalition members of the committee did share some reservations about recommendations which might restrict free negotiations involving Aboriginal people. Running a business should not primarily be about going to meetings or securing program grants. It is about seeing an opportunity, seizing that opportunity, developing skills, taking risks, reaping the rewards of providing a service to the community, and getting out there and making things happen.

Kerry Rea (Bonner, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the committee for its report. I would like to rise as a member of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs who was closely involved in developing the Open for business report into Indigenous businesses. As a newly elected member of parliament I was certainly aware of the work that was done having seen many question times on television. I was certainly keen to be involved in the amazing work that happens in an electorate that is done by all hardworking members of this House but I think for any new member the real unknown is in fact the incredible amount of detailed work, investigation and policy analysis that occurs at the committee level. Over the last 12 months as a newly elected member, it has been my activities and involvement in the various standing committees that I am a member of that has brought a lot of interest and satisfaction to my role as a member of this parliament.

There is probably therefore no greater honour than to be addressing the chamber on a report that, as a member, I have been involved in and which I have actually seen come to fruition in the form of a fairly thick document with quite significant recommendations. Indeed this particular report does contain some very significant recommendations for the government, for industry and indeed for the Indigenous people of this country.

We know that Indigenous people face significant challenges in attaining the quality of life that they deserve and aspire to. We have heard many times—particularly over the last 12 months as a result of the Prime Minister’s apology and continuous commitment to implementing practical initiatives—of the disadvantage that exists within Indigenous communities in remote rural areas but also within our urban areas and our major cities. We know of the gap that exists between non-Indigenous communities and Indigenous communities regarding life expectancy and associated other health problems. We know that, as a government and as a community, we have a moral responsibility to try and deal with the underlying issues that have created that gap and to look at practical ways in which we can improve the quality of life of Indigenous people in our country. That is why I am very pleased to be talking on this particular report.

The committee travelled across the country—to most of the capital cities and to other areas such as Kununurra and Cairns. We received submissions from a wide variety of individuals and organisations and heard directly from a wide variety of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people who have a passion in this particular area. It will not surprise anyone in this chamber or indeed elsewhere to hear that we heard about the challenges that many Indigenous people face, such as the issue of dealing with racial discrimination and prejudice and the difficulties that arise from social isolation and alienation. We certainly know that there are some real challenges in remote communities regarding self-worth, self-esteem and indeed the strengthening of the family unit.

What was most heartening was to also hear of the many and very diverse positive stories that are out there in the Indigenous community. We might have thought at the beginning of this inquiry that small business and Indigenous people did not necessarily go together, except in the case of people working in an artists co-op or in the cultural industry. I can assure the chamber that that is not the case. There are an enormous number of Indigenous people within this country who are working in all sorts of different enterprises, who are running small businesses that employ people and who are contributing significantly both to their own financial independence and also to that of the communities in which they live.

We heard of and visited some incredible artists and people involved in the cultural industry. We met with a number of Indigenous corporations that, as a result of working in partnership and agreement with the mining sector, have seen employment, small businesses and contracts increasing. We also spoke to people in our cities who are running mechanics workshops and car detailing workshops and all sorts of different small businesses. It was very heartening to see the level and breadth of enterprise that is out there in Indigenous communities.

There are 14 recommendations in this report and all of them are quite significant. As a result of the hearings and analysis of the submissions, there are three main planks in the committee report. One is that we need to get better at collecting data. As I have already said, there are a significant number of existing enterprises out there, and we simply do not have the data to identify the breadth of Indigenous business that already exists in this country. It is very important that we can measure the amount of activity and develop the statistics. Also, we heard from many Indigenous small business people who said that they had their business established but for one reason or another needed a bit of support and some resources to take them to the next level—maybe an individual businessperson running a small business from home with some support and resources both from the private sector and from government that has the capacity to move into office premises and employ a couple of people. So it is not just about finding out what is out there; that data can lead us to targeting programs that will help existing businesses as well as develop new ones.

In that vein, the second plank of the report is really about easy access to information and support services. Many Indigenous people, particularly those running their own businesses in remote communities, identified that there are many different programs within government, outside government and across the country that would be of some assistance to them in building up their businesses. But how do you find out about this plethora of programs and resources? It is very important that we find some way of creating a one-stop shop or one port of call, whether virtual or physical, where somebody who is starting a business or who has just started a business and is ready to go to the next level can go for easy information and find out about all of the support services that are out there for them.

Of course, the last plank in a sense is that of procurement. This leads to the heart of the report and some of the most significant recommendations within the report, the first being the idea that as a government we commit—and hopefully encourage state and territory and local governments as well—to examining the possibility of a percentage of our procurement being given to Indigenous businesses. As a very large procurer of a whole range of goods and services, it would be a wonderful initiative if the government were able to identify Indigenous businesses from which it was able to procure some part of its needs. Imagine the opportunity that would give to Indigenous people and the encouragement that would give to others to start up their business.

In the same way, the committee recommends the development of an Indigenous supplier development council, which is modelled on the minority business council that has been a very successful model in the United States for the past 40 years. Indeed, we met with representatives of that council recently when they came here on a visit. I was talking to an African-American woman who runs a labour hire business and was about to recognise a turnover of $1 billion—something that she has been able to do as a result of being a member of the National Minority Supplier Development Council. She said how incredible it would be to see Indigenous people in this country reaching that level of economic independence and financial contribution to the broader economy.

I strongly recommend that members of this parliament look closely at these recommendations and endorse them. There is an acknowledgement in the report of the already very successful agreements that exist around Indigenous land use agreements, but I draw the attention of members particularly to the recommendations to strengthen support both on a financial and legal level to Indigenous organisations so that negotiations with sometimes very significant multinational mining companies can be done on a more equal footing and we can see more support going back into Indigenous communities as a result.

I offer my congratulations to the committee secretariat under the very skilled guidance of Pauline Brown. I am pleased that this report is here. Pauline is expecting her first child and was able to see this report put before the parliament just before going on maternity leave. We all wish her well. I congratulate the committee chair, Richard Marles, the member for Corio, who like me is a new member to this parliament and who was able to so skilfully guide this report to fruition. I think he deserves being commended for it. I congratulate all the committee members. It was certainly, as a committee goes, a very fruitful discussion carried out in a very good spirit. I do believe that everybody who was involved in the committee from both sides of the House contributed well and that, as a result, we have seen some significant recommendations coming out of it.

As a result of this report we will see emerging in this country even stronger Indigenous businesses. We will see the private sector through the establishment of an Indigenous supplier development council contributing significantly to the support of Indigenous business in this country. We will see enterprise expand and, as a result, I hope we will see the social disadvantage that is faced by Indigenous people within our country diminish because we will be contributing to their financial and economic independence. We know that that is the best way of creating a greater sense of self-worth and of giving people the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to the community and to receive appropriate remuneration for it. We know that is a way in which we can address so many other areas of individual and social disadvantage. I hope that what we will also see as a result of this report is Indigenous people strengthening their skills and, through the contribution that they have made to our country over many thousands of years, support for further cultural activities and business. We should also look at their incredible knowledge and understanding of the land and the opportunities that will result from their incredible wisdom when it comes to caring for this land. I hope we will see carbon reduction enterprises coming out of the use of their talents and skills in ways that will improve our natural environment and contribute to the diminishing of greenhouse gases. This may be a small report, but there are a lot of good ideas in it and I look forward to seeing them come to fruition.

Debate (on motion by Mr Hayes) adjourned.