Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Speaker has received a letter from the honourable member for Moncrieff proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The failure of the Government to support Australian small business.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors, Tourism and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, it is great to have the opportunity to raise the plight of Australia’s 2.4 million small businesses that employ around 3.8 million Australians because if there is a group of Australians who are doing it particularly tough in these economic times, it is the small business sector. We know that the small business sector is, as many people have stated, the engine room of the Australian economy. These things become often quoted because they are so profoundly true. As I have been moving around Australia, working with so many members on the coalition side, talking with local small businesses, participating in the Jobs for Australia forum, I have been hearing a number of messages very loud and clear from those people who put their houses on the line, who take a risk in respect of their income and who take the chance to succeed in small business and to also risk the failure of small business. The message I have received, and I know other people on this side of the chamber have received it too, is that this Labor government does not understand small business; it does not understand what motivates small business. And most importantly, and most distressingly, the Australian Labor Party is a party that questions the motives of small business. That is what concerns us so fundamentally.

I just noticed then that the minister who is charged with the responsibility of looking after small business, the member for Rankin, was looking puzzled and curious when I said that the Labor Party questions the motives of small business owners. This is the minister who on radio said that the reason that small businesses should have to comply with unfair dismissal is because the owner might come in one day in a bad mood and fire a good staff member. That is what the minister said, that is the reason why the Australian Labor Party is lumbering the small business sector with compliance through the fair dismissal code.

But it is not only in this area that the Australian Labor Party has such poor form. It has been a longstanding principle that the Australian Labor Party has not pretended to be a party of small business. In fact, those words were said by a former leader of the Australian Labor Party, the former member for Brand, Kim Beazley. He said that the Australian Labor Party is not a party for small business and has never pretended to be. Not a lot has changed, except that these days those opposite run around trying to pretend to be a party of small business. That is about all that has changed when it comes to small business policy by the Australian Labor Party. But when we look at what the Australian Labor Party has actually done for small business, when we look at what the minister at the table and the Prime Minister have actually done for small business, I can say that the answer is not very much at all. And that is the reason why the MPI is up for debate today. There are a number of issues that have been on the policy radar for some time, a number of issues that I and members of the coalition have been agitating for and pleading with the Labor Party to take advice on, to listen to small business and to act in accordance with what small business needs to promote their interests.

There are two very important issues. The first of these is the modern awards process. Under the modern awards process the Australian Labor Party is putting at direct risk thousands of small businesses, their viability and their profits. Most concerning of all, by putting the viability of these small businesses at risk, they are threatening tens of thousands of jobs. The Australian Labor Party likes to make out that it is the friend of the workers. How many times have we seen the Prime Minister and others say, ‘We’re about working people’? Well there are a lot fewer of them these days, that’s for sure! And the Australian Labor Party’s policy with respect to modern awards is only going to make the problem so much worse.

I have made it part of my focus and part of the coalition’s policy commitment to make sure that small business has a voice in this parliament, to make sure that the coalition stands up for the rights of small business owners and for the fact that they are willing to employ around 3.8 million Australians. When I talk to small business owners about the modern awards process that the Australian Labor Party is ramming down the throats of small business owners, they make it very clear what the actual impact will be on their businesses. Take, for example, the owner of South Bank Beach News and Souvenirs, Tony Philbrick. He wrote sometime ago to the Prime Minister. He outlined to the Prime Minister the impact of Labor’s proposed modern awards on his business. He said:

Based on information we have received, we calculate that the Modern Award (to come into effect 1st January, 2010) will force a 14% increase to our weekly wage bill. To protect our family business we will have to reduce expenses to continue to remain cash flow positive.

Do you know how they intend to reduce expenses? Like so many newsagents in this country, they will reduce expenses by cutting staff. He said:

Due to the specific treatment the proposed Modern Award applies to dramatically increasing weekend penalty rates, the first expense—

and the minister should listen closely—

we will have to consider is reducing the wages of our weekend staff.

There is the concrete evidence from someone in the Prime Minister’s electorate about the impact. Lance Barrett, from the Coolum Village News and Casket Agency, also wrote to the Prime Minister, and he said:

Dear Prime Minister,

You might recall late last year whilst attending a function at the Hyatt Regency Coolum, that you came into my beachside shop one Sunday afternoon and chatted with my staff, a delightful 17 year old girl named Emma. Emma, this year her School Captain, is working weekends in order to fund a future university education.

I have to say, Mr Deputy Speaker, she is the kind of girl who is willing to roll her sleeves up and work for her future. What does Lance Barrett say about Labor’s modern award process and the impact on his small business? In his letter, he said:

However, with the prospect of wage increases and penalty rate hikes amounting to around 30% of my gross wages, I have no alternative other than to drastically cut back on casual staff hours. This week I have had to tell Emma, and also Melissa, Michelle, Shannen, Georgia and Jess that unless the government of the country sees common sense, their casual hours with us will cease to exist, my shops will be closed every Sunday, and their chance of a good financial footing when they leave school or university will have evaporated.

That is another example of the feedback that this side of the House not only receives but, in contrast to the government, listens to with respect to the modern awards process. There are so many letters. The member for Canning, Don Randall, who I know stands up for those members in his electorate, received a letter from Lynda Jacobs from the Kelmscott IGA. She said:

The Federal Government has spent the last eighteen months working towards reforming Workplace Relation laws, which include the introduction of a new General Retail Industry Award. If this Award becomes operative it will have a serious damaging effect on our business. We provide an important service to our local community but we may be unable to do that in the future if we are required to pay these large increases.

           …         …         …

As concerned employers, we do not want to reduce staff, but we fear that this may be one of the inevitable consequences of the introduction of this new Award.

Andrew Laming, the member for Bowman, received a letter from Toscani’s talking about the impact that would see his labour costs increase by some 20 per cent. The owner said:

This additional cost will make my business marginal. In particular Sunday trading (which will incur in the new arrangements a 175% penalty) will not be viable and I will have to look at applying a penalty or closing in Sunday.

The member for McEwen received a letter from KoalaCountry saying the same story—increased costs, reduced employment. The member for Macarthur received a letter from the Outback Steakhouse again stating that there will be increased costs and reduced employment. The member for Forrest, Nola Marino, received a letter from Busselton Fresh IGA stating that there will be increased costs and reduced employment. River Fresh IGA stated the same story. The member for Dickson received the same story from a small business owner of seven years.

In every single example, we see a message that Labor just does not get. Labor just does not understand small business. It does not understand that there is a link between the costs of operating a business and the employment opportunities that they provide to their staff and to the profitability of that business. I have news for the Australian Labor Party: not every small business owner is rolling in cash; the vast bulk of them basically live from week to week earning a meagre salary. I tell the members of the Labor Party that they do it by putting their family’s future on the line and by putting their homes on the line, and they deserve the support of a government that is willing to stand up for small business—not to increase their costs, not to reduce employment opportunities for young Australians but a serious ‘ridgy-didge’ government, to use the Prime Minister’s language. They deserve a government that is willing to actually do something to help small business. That is what we need and that is part of the reason this side of politics condemns the Australian Labor Party for its exceptionally lacklustre performance in supporting Australia’s small businesses.

In addition, we have another example of where the Australian Labor Party has been particularly impotent in helping small business. When you look at the franchising sector, you have to wonder what the Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy, who is at the table, has been doing. There are about 1,100 business format franchise systems that operate in Australia. The total sales turnover of this sector of the economy is about $61 billion as at 2007. There are around 413,500 people that are employed in franchises through Australia.

I know, through working closely with people like the member for Gilmore, the member for Canning, the member for Swan and the member for Hinkler—they are just a few people on this side of the House who are committed to franchisees—that they have been concerned about a couple of aspects that are causing great distress to a number of franchisees. On 24 October 2007, the minister at the table said:

Good faith bargaining was rejected by the Coalition but we are embracing it.

He highlighted it as part of his comments then that the Labor Party policy would be to enact a good faith bargaining principle in the franchise code. On the 23 May 2008, the Small Business Ministerial Council communiqué highlighted that the Australian government will:

… consistent with its pre-election commitment, consider the introduction of a well defined obligation for parties to bargain and negotiate in “good faith” as part of the franchising code of conduct.

So there are hundreds of thousands of people out there who have spoken with me and other members on this side of the chamber and who were waiting for the Australian Labor Party to introduce its good faith bargaining proposition. This is a principle that those on this side of the House support as well, contrary to the assertions by the Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy.

We waited for the Australian Labor Party to carry through with its pre-election promise, and nothing happened. Nothing occurred and we were left waiting. So when I saw the Joint Standing Committee on Corporations and Financial Services move to have an inquiry into the Franchising Code of Conduct and related matters on 25 June last year, I thought, ‘This will be the opportunity—this will be the excuse the minister will be using as to why he has not acted for so long and maybe this will be the reason that something will happen.’

The committee provided its report on 1 December last year. On 26 February, some three months later, we still had not heard anything. I was still waiting. People were calling me and saying: ‘What’s going on? You’re the shadow minister. You must know what the minister for small business is up to. Give us some direction.’ I kept saying, ‘It has been three months. I am sure that at some stage the government will respond.’ After all, by this stage it had been 18 months since the Australian Labor Party was elected and you would have thought that they would have had the opportunity to implement the policy by then, but no—there was still nothing.

So I put a question in writing to the minister. The minister said in his response to me that the government was ‘considering the report’ and would ‘respond in due course’. I put the question in on 26 February and received a response on 4 June, and, interestingly, on 31 May—just four days before—the minister, out of nowhere, issued a press release where he said, ‘We will consult on franchise reforms.’ So that was the big announcement! That was the only big announcement that we have had about franchising after 20 months of the Australian Labor Party. That is the full extent of this minister’s response to franchising—to put out one lousy press release.

I plead on behalf of all of those people in the franchising sector for this minister and this government to start doing something. Eleven recommendations came from the committee, and I put it to the minister that, in the main, all 11 recommendations are relatively non-controversial. This minister and this government need to act. Stop stalling—people’s lives are potentially being destroyed as a result of this government’s inaction, and it is time that they did something.

Small business in this country will lead us out of this recession. It will lead Australia’s economic revival. But it needs a government that is focused on making it easier for it to do that. The worst thing that this government can do is to continue putting up the costs of small business, thereby driving up unemployment as small businesses are forced to pay higher costs and reduce their employment. It is time that the minister and this government stopped sitting on their hands and actually did something to help small business. (Time expired)

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On occasion, the member for Moncrieff, the shadow minister for small business, has delivered a passable speech in this parliament, but I thought that was a particularly dusty effort. He obviously had a good time at the midwinter ball last night and is just not firing today. But he made a number of points on an MPI which is about the government’s support for small business, and I would just like to take members in the chamber through a couple of statements that he made in his contribution.

The member for Moncrieff said that there are far fewer working people these days. Let us understand what is going on here: this is part of a coordinated effort by coalition members to talk the economy down—to pretend to present to the Australian people that the total number of employed people in this country has fallen in the last few months. These are the sorts of claims that have been made by the shadow Treasurer, who at one point claimed that employment had fallen by 80,000 people. Indeed, it was one of these auctions where the shadow finance minister, Senator Coonan, on Sky News Sunday Agenda on 3 May said:

What have we seen, in fact 154,000 jobs lost just since October.

Yet again we have got the shadow Treasurer, the shadow finance minister and now the shadow small business minister all asserting that jobs have been lost since last year. Let us have a look at some of the facts. Between October of last year and May of this year, the total number of people employed has fallen by 24,000, not by 80,000 as claimed by the shadow Treasurer and not by 154,000 as claimed by the shadow finance minister.

I ask members in the parliament to imagine what the total number of jobs lost—the reduction in employment—is in the 12 months to May of this year. I suppose that people, if they were listening to the coalition, would say, ‘Well, it might be 20,000 less or 30,000 or 40,000 less.’ In truth, in that period—in the last year—total employment has grown by 35,000. There is employment growth in this country.

From the change of government in November 2007 until the latest figures, which became available in May, the total number of employed people has risen by 145,000. If you were listening to the coalition, you would never pick that, would you? They are always talking the economy down. I have been asked for evidence of the coalition talking the economy down. There is no clearer evidence of the coalition knowing the truth—the figures are produced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics—than the shadow finance minister, the shadow Treasurer and now the small business minister all asserting that there has been a big reduction in employment in this country. There is no more irresponsible way of talking the economy down than coalition MPs coming to this place and trying to tell people that they are going to lose their jobs because there has been a big reduction in employment in this country.

The coalition would rather see the people of Australia fail than see the government succeed—that is the problem. The only jobs that they are concerned about are the jobs of 30 coalition frontbenchers. I understand that the composition of the front bench is going to change fairly soon, because I remember the deputy leader of the Liberal Party saying, only a few days ago, that the problem with the Labor Party—

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The minister has circumnavigated the globe of relevance. Can I ask the minister to come back to the MPI.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order.

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I remember the deputy leader of the Liberal Party saying, ‘The problem with this reshuffle is that there’s not enough women on the front bench.’

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on the same point of order: relevance.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order.

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, can I put it to you that, if he gets up again with that same point of order, you deal with him.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, you cannot put it to me.

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The fact is the deputy leader of the Liberal Party was saying: ‘There’s not enough women in the Labor frontbench, not enough women in the Labor cabinet.’ There are more women in the Labor cabinet than there are in the shadow cabinet. I can see the member for Moncrieff is sweating already because the deputy leader of the Liberal Party is saying, ‘In the reshuffle, a couple of the blokes have got to go.’ Member for Moncrieff, if you keep misrepresenting the situation about employment in this country, you ought to be the first to go.

Here are some of the real facts about employment in this country. This is a great day on which to be debating this issue of small businesses because there are now 15,250 more Australians employed in the retail sector than there were in November of last year. Why would that be? Could that be related to the stimulus package—the stimulus package that they regard as a low-quality spend, a waste of money? I do not think it is a waste of money to have 15,250 more people employed in the retail sector than there were in November last year when there are 308,000 fewer people employed in retail in the United States, 37,000 fewer in Canada, 32,000 fewer in the UK and 31,000 fewer in New Zealand. It is the direct result of the stimulus package.

I will just show my colleagues—because I know the member opposite will not be interested in this—the economic growth in our country in the March quarter. Here is the chart showing economic growth in this country in the March quarter—it is positive. We are right up there in the right-hand corner. Good on Poland and good on Australia—we are the only two countries in the OECD that have positive economic growth.

If we go to chart 8, we see the same thing on retail sales, the very point I was making. Look at the retail sales figures there, I say to the shadow minister. Australia, in the orange box, is up there, growing, growing and growing—and in the United States, negative; Canada, negative; Japan, negative; New Zealand, negative; and, the Euro area, negative. So we have growing retail sales in this country. You know what has been going on despite the dishonest scare campaign of the coalition? What has been going on in the last couple of weeks is a lift in consumer confidence and a lift in business confidence, including a lift in small business confidence.

I reckon that the reason for that lift in small business confidence is that small business know that on our side we are sticking up for them, on our side we are supporting small business with our small business tax break, with our stimulus package—70 per cent of which is investment in nation-building infrastructure—and with the biggest school modernisation program in Australia’s history. Less than a year from now there will be 35,000 construction sites.

Who is going to be working on the construction sites? The tradies, the carpenters, the plumbers and the electricians. They are supposed to be, as far as members opposite are concerned, the core constituency of the coalition. We are supporting them and the coalition is doing nothing to support them—worse than that, they are talking the economy down, trying to smash consumer confidence and small business confidence. Why? For their own miserable gain. They only want gain for themselves, for those 30 jobs on the front bench—not the hundreds of thousands of jobs that are being preserved and protected by this government.

Treasury estimates show that 210,000 Australians are in jobs now because of the stimulus package, because of the investment allowance and because of the nation-building infrastructure. I think that is great news, and do you know what? So do small business. Surveys have been released just today, such as the ACCI-Westpac survey of industrial trends, which says that general business confidence has seen its largest improvement since 1975. Could that be right? I know that the coalition gets that survey—why didn’t the member for Moncrieff mention it? Why aren’t you there talking the economy up instead of talking the economy down? The answer is: because it does not suit you to talk the economy up. It does not suit you to join this government in supporting small business and small business confidence.

Another major survey was released today specifically related to small and medium enterprises, and do you know what it shows? The strongest quarterly increase in the survey’s 16-year history. They are good results. They are great results. Go the small business community of Australia! We are sticking up for the small business community of Australia. This Sensis survey is interesting because it is about small- and medium-sized businesses. Small businesses were also reported as being more confident than medium businesses for the first time since November 2000. So the small and medium businesses are especially confident.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The small ones. Why do you reckon they are so confident? Because of the support. It is the support of this government that is engendering confidence in that very important part of the community—the 1.9 million small businesses employing almost four million working Australians. Ms Christina Singh, who is responsible for the Sensis survey, said:

The latest data suggests Australia’s economic environment is starting to rebound, with businesses expecting their operations to perform significantly better in the next 12 months.

So there you go—confidence on the rise.

Consumer sentiment figures were released just a few days ago. What do they show about consumer sentiment? The second largest recorded increase in the last 22 years. So things are on the up. We do have a long way to go. We do need to work in partnership with the small business community, and we will continue to work in partnership with the small business community.

The member for Moncrieff raised in his contribution the issue of modern awards, as if to suggest that all these cost increases that are being claimed have already occurred or that they are inevitably going to occur. He knows and the shadow minister for industrial relations knows that the award modernisation process is a very necessary reform in this country that has been called for for decades by employer groups, large and small. They want to reduce the compliance costs of around 1,600 individual state based, industry based and even business based awards and have only 18 modern awards. He has raised issues about two or three of them. You heard the Deputy Prime Minister talk about what we have done in relation to the restaurant and catering industry, where we have in fact asked the Industrial Relations Commission to have a further look at that. We are in dialogue with others who are affected by the modern awards system. It is a reform to reduce compliance costs, and what do we get? Opposition from the coalition to the award modernisation process.

I remember the then Minister for Industrial Relations coming into this place and saying, ‘Shearers under this award have to be provided with tapioca pudding,’ criticising but never doing anything. That is the problem. The shadow minister for small business for one year and one month has not been able to get a question up through the tactics committee, which is chaired by the member for O’Connor. I saw the member for O’Connor walking around today with a document, which was obviously tactics—

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors, Tourism and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, I rise on a point of order. I am loathe to stand up, but the minister knows that that is completely untrue. He means ‘a question to him’, and I am not interested in asking him a question.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Moncrieff will resume his seat. The minister has the call.

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The tactics will not allow you to ask a question of me, because you are afraid of the answer and afraid of the truth, which is what I would give to you: the truth, so that we cut through this rubbish, this recklessness and this opportunism of the coalition, which is seeking to talk the economy down at every opportunity and seeking to misrepresent the employment figures for this country. They entered into this debate on a day in which business surveys are revealing good and encouraging news. What did they do? They came in here and complained, saying, ‘It’s really bad; you’re not doing enough for small business.’ If you had supported the stimulus package, you might have at least a little bit of an argument. You could say, ‘We could do a bit more.’ But no, you opposed the stimulus package and you opposed the investment in nation building infrastructure.

There is a member on the back bench nodding proudly: the member for Bowman. ‘Yeah, we opposed it; look at us; we’re the heroes of small business.’ What are you doing for our tradies? Just yesterday, the Australian Business Investment Partnership hit the fence. Why? Now the jobs of 50,000 tradies are at risk. You should be ashamed of yourselves. And you come into this parliament asking, ‘What are you doing for small business?’ I say: what are you doing for small business? Why are you talking the economy down? Why are you betraying our tradies? It is because of base political instincts to do with your self preservation and your desire to remain on the front bench in the reshuffle. It has been a poor performance by you: dusty at the midwinter ball; dusty next week. You should give it away and get someone who can come in here and engage in a proper and constructive debate and talk the economy up instead of talking the economy down.

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We meet here this afternoon because in this global shock we have mounting unemployment in this country and stresses that small business have not seen for a decade. I see members from the other side exiting this chamber. They could stay around for a little while and learn a little bit more about the plight of small business people, who they do not meet in their own electorates. Members for Eden-Monaro, Dobell, Isaacs, Makin, Fremantle, Parramatta, Forde, Longman, Leichhardt, Bonner, Solomon, Page and Brand, I implore you to stick around. I do not like seeing the backs of you the way that small business people in your electorate see the backs of you because this government has abandoned them.

The stimulus package by this government, if you compare it to all stimulus packages around the world, has the least in it for small business. You only need to look at what the US has done and what OECD economies have done in Europe. When you look at Australia, it was basically cash payments that were very poorly directed and construction stimulus that went straight to the commercial building of multipurpose halls in schools. I am not about to criticise the importance of funding to schools, but there was never a better time than this year to protect our small businesses. They are, as the member for Moncrieff has said, the backbone of this economy. For those nearly four million Australians who work in small business, I rise today to speak. We in fact proposed this MPI for that very reason.

What we have here effectively is a government that has abrogated its responsibility. The minister is full of bluff and bluster in a souffle like attempt to defend the record of this government, which is appalling, on the back of one survey result that came out this week. I am not any kind of analyst, but what creates the greatest likelihood of a good survey result in a poll is an atrocious one the poll before. When it collapses in May, of course there will be some sort of bounce back in June, which can be of a record quantity purely because of the collapse the month before. That explains why we have a small bit of good news—which of course is always welcomed on this side of the chamber.

What we on this side have is a coherent approach to protecting small business. The government virtually turned a blind eye. I will give a little bit of history. Remember 2008? When they should have been preparing for the economic crisis and the threats that this economy faced, they were holding 2020 forums and bringing in actors like Cate Blanchett and shamelessly politicising her. In 2009, they egged on the Reserve Bank to four interest rate increases over seven months when not another developed economy was doing that. While other economies stared down small levels of inflation that were mostly due to drought induced commodity price increases and to increases in petroleum prices, it was Australia that blinked and put enormous pressures on small business. That will not be forgotten in wider Australia.

What we on this side have done is come up with meaningful alternatives, such as net operating loss carry back provisions, which are welcome for strongly performing small businesses that hit a wall in this economy. On the other side, we have seen virtually nothing except depreciation arrangements that help only the smallest proportion of small business. We needed so much more from this government; we did not see it.

It is worth making an international comparison; economies in banking crises are suffering extraordinary economic pain, but this country that had strong banks, a very small manufacturing sector compared to resources and most importantly of all no net debt—thanks to the Howard government, which put us in an ideal place to be able to stimulate the economy. What we saw was a Prime Minister who panicked. He went across to the G20, listened to all of the foreboding predictions for economies that had banking crises, problems with return on investments, problems with return on equity, net interest margins that were very small, massive exposure to derivatives and liquidity and cash to total asset ratios that were very small. All of those reasons meant that these countries were in enormous peril. But it was this country that forgot small business in its stimulus package. This government stimulated inefficiently and wastefully. Australia will now see the results: significant increases in unemployment. This government has been able to focus on nothing more than one retail sector survey and the very small proportion of this economy’s performance that it represents.