Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sadly, it is my melancholy duty to advise the chamber and small businesses in Australia that yet another Labor broken promise is being inflicted on the engine room of the Australian economy. In this parliament, the coalition worked very collaboratively and quite cooperatively with the government to put in place the Australian National Business Names Registration System. It was, in fact, an initiative instigated during the Howard government years—something that, to the government's credit, they did pick up.

What we tried to do, after saving the government from itself where consequential provisions were actually going to be introduced before the main bill itself had taken effect, was work through a number of concerns that have been raised with us. Those concerns were very legitimate and reflected the small business community's experience with the state based registers. Some of the concerns arose out of the transition to a single national registration scheme.

We were particularly assured for home based businesses that their privacy would be protected—that there would be measures put in place to make sure that their place of work, which was also their private home, would not be disclosed to the full world. We have now found that that assurance has not been met. I met yesterday with ASIC to work through a number of issues. This was one of them, and there were also issues in relation to the transfer of businesses and concerns about like names and the use of locator descriptors. There is much work to be done there, but it is sad that the small business community could not count on the government's word. We will try to work effectively to deal with the concerns— (Time expired)