Ms Anna Burke (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received letters from the honourable Leader of The Nationals and the honourable member for Page proposing that definite matters of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion today. As required by standing order 46(d), I have selected the matter which, in my opinion, is the most urgent and important; that is, that proposed by the honourable Leader of The Nationals, namely:

The adverse impact of the Government’s economic policies on Australia’s small business sector.

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—

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for choosing wisely on what is the most important agenda item for today. It is particularly relevant today, because we have another new Minister for Small Business. There have been four Labor government small business ministers in just 14 months: Nick Sherry, Mark Arbib, Brendan O'Connor and now Chris Bowen. This is the minister, of course, who was appointed to stop the boats. Unfortunately he was a dismal failure, with record arrivals.

Let us hope for small business's sake that he is not just as unsuccessful when it comes to reviving the fate of Australia's small businesses.

Every one of Labor's small business ministers has presided over a small business sector that has got smaller and less profitable and has employed fewer people. Small business is being crushed by Labor’s burden of red tape and regulation, by its restrictive workplace laws, by the Fair Work Act, which is anything but fair to small business employers, and by high taxes and higher costs. They are squeezed on one hand by big business, like the Woolworths, Coles, Bunnings and Harvey Normans of the world, and on the other hand by the internet traders, who have much lower costs and are able to seize more and more of their market share.

The reality is that small business is struggling. Small business is battling right across the nation. As I and my colleagues have travelled around and visited flood and fire ravaged communities, we have spoken to many small businesses who need to rebuild their shop or to clear the mud out so that they can commence trading. Sadly, many of these businesses, these farmers and manufacturers, have said they do not think they have a capacity to recover. It is not that they do not have the skills; it is not that they are not good at their business; it is just that the burden of regulation, the burden of higher taxes, the lack of support from this government and the power of heavy-handed union officials have made it all not worth the trouble. They do not have the will or the enthusiasm to try to get over this crisis, because they know there will be another one ahead just around the corner as long as this government is in office.

Small business is crying out for Labor’s high tax and high debt and its regulation monkey to be lifted from their backs. Labor’s forgotten families and forgotten small businesses are constantly facing higher costs and higher taxes, and the government does not seem to appreciate that people in small business do not have the capacity to simply pass that on to millions of customers who are waiting at their door. They have to work very hard for their business. They cannot afford to increase their costs because there are competitors, big competitors, and people with lower costs operating from overseas in Australia who can seize market share so that small businesses become less competitive.

Small business is often referred to as the engine room of the Australian economy. Under Labor’s mismanagement the engine has stalled. That is one of the factors that is bearing heavily on the enthusiasm and the optimism of Australians as they face the current economic difficulties. In small business, job losses are mounting and job security is simply a pipedream for many employees as well as their employers. The number of job advertisements has fallen for 11 consecutive months now, 11 months in a row. The ABS retail sales figures out today show that retail sales fell again in December. As a nation, we have stopped playing to our strengths. We have stopped looking after the engine in our economy. Labor is not prepared to back small business. Instead, they are out with their Greens and so-called Independent mates vilifying these businesses and industries that have made Australia great over a century—our miners, farmers, manufacturers, tourism operators and power generators. Small businesses are being vilified in the name of green dogma, union power and tax binges from this government. Their costs are increasing and the skids are being put under the millions of Australian jobs that they create.

The Australian Industry Group’s performance of manufacturing index this month shows manufacturing in decline for the 11th straight month. This government claims it supports manufacturing, yet the industry has been in decline for 11 months in a row. At least 110,000 jobs have been lost in Australian manufacturing since 2008. Manufacturers are paying over the odds for material costs because of the high Australian dollar and they are being told to just eat the extra cost of the carbon tax. It does not matter that they have got to bear a cost that none of their competitors have to face while they are trying to stay afloat against cheaper global competition. The abattoirs are up for $250,000 or $500,000 extra on their freezer bills. There are small communities that depend on these industries. They are often the biggest employer in town, yet they are being faced with more and more tax. What about the people in the hospitality sector—those trying to serve meals out of hours or to keep a coffee shop open on the weekend—and the lack of flexibility in the so-called Fair Work Act? It is quite clear that union domination has been allowed to prevail over common sense. The union bosses would prefer people to have no pay packet at all rather than an affordable wage.

The small businesses that my colleagues and I have visited are simply dismayed and depressed. They do not know where to go. These people have taken great pride in what they do, in what they have built up for themselves, their families and their country. They take pride in their ability to employ people and to make a contribution to their local community. Yet they have been pilloried, persecuted and vilified by this government. The overriding instinct under Labor is not how they can grow and employ more people; it is how they can hit them next. How can we find another tax to impose upon these people? This is an incompetent government that does not want to understand the needs of these people or their lack of capacity to insulate themselves, or their lack of capacity to insulate themselves, from these taxes. That is the antithesis to the business culture that we want and need to cultivate in this country.

The coalition has a plan to help small business to provide more jobs, better jobs and jobs with security.

Unfortunately, the Labor Party is so preoccupied with arguing about its own jobs, and particularly the Prime Minister's job, that it is not interested in what is happening to small business and the people who work to keep this economy strong. Our job in government should be to make it easier, not harder, for business to be more productive and to grow and employ more Australians.

Our priorities as a coalition will be to provide a stronger and more prosperous economy that delivers new jobs, higher wages and better services for families. We have done it before. The Howard government created 2.4 million jobs, oversaw a 21 per cent increase in real wages and saw Australian families almost triple net household wealth. Now, in an era of dwindling job opportunities and high costs and intense insecurity, bizarrely the Prime Minister is telling Australians they do not pay enough tax. After 27 new taxes she is looking around for more ways to make industry and employers in Australia less profitable. This is the highest spending government in Australian history. This year they will receive $70 billion more than in the last budget of the Howard government. They are spending $100 billion more. Their revenue is up. The government keeps talking about decline in revenue. It may not have been as much as they predicted a few months ago, but it is still more than they had last year. Labor's problem is not a revenue problem; it is a spending problem—their complete inability to keep their expenditure under control.

Another myth that Labor likes to perpetuate is that somehow or other interest rates have been lower under its government than under the Howard government. That is simply untrue. The real average interest rates paid by homeowners and small business borrowers were lower under the coalition government than they have been under Labor. According to the Reserve Bank of Australia, average small business overdraft rates were 8.89 per cent under the coalition government, from March 1996 to November 2007, compared with 10.16 per cent under Labor between December 2007 and January 2013. Labor is simply not telling the truth when it says that interest rates are lower. Small business knows what they are paying and they are paying a lot more under Labor than they did under the previous government. Indeed, for a typical small business unsecured overdraft loan of $200,000, the difference between the coalition government and Labor has been $2,540 a year or $212 a month.

In reality this government has been a burden on small business and it has sought to make those burdens even worse. The minister challenged me to name an example of the way the government has imposed additional tax on small business. You need to go no further than the carbon tax. Any small business that has complained about the carbon tax has been vilified by the government and told they can simply pass it on to their consumers. You can simply pass it on and the people will pay. They are all getting compensation. Everybody is better off. The reality is that this is a business burden that Australians are paying and that our competitors are not—$23 per tonne penalty for carbon emissions. That goes up on 1 July and again on 1 July next year. Last week the European carbon price dropped below $3. It is down to $2 in New Zealand, but we are paying $23. Ironically, the EU price jumped up to $6 later on the news that Germany is going to open up a lot more coal fired power stations. The price of carbon went up in Europe because they are going to build more coal fired power stations. What is the logic of what this government is doing? It is simply imposing burdens on this country—the highest carbon price in the world—to make small business in Australia less able to be competitive.

When the Howard government left office the ABS estimated that 5,061,000 people were employed by Australian small business—51.3 per cent of the private sector workforce. By June 2009 the ABS reported small business job losses of more than 300,000 under Labor and a decline in the private sector workforce employed in small business to 48 per cent. The reality is that since this government came to office there are 14,500 fewer small businesses employing Australians. This government has no interest in the plight of small business and it does not seem to be prepared to do anything to help.

On 13 January this year the current Prime Minister matched her predecessor's record of 935 days in the Lodge. Remember that she said that she had to knife the previous Prime Minister because Labor had lost its way and our country needed new direction. As Prime Minister Kevin Rudd ran up $42 billion in net debt, the current Prime Minister has taken it to $147 billion in net debt. Under the previous Prime Minister electricity went up 34 per cent, under this one an average 41 per cent. Under Kevin Rudd gas prices rose 26 per cent, under this Prime Minister 29 per cent. Kevin Rudd promised to be a fiscal conservative, but he delivered three budget deficits. The current Prime Minister, after promising more than a hundred times that this budget would be balanced, has also now abandoned that promise. She, like Kevin Rudd, will go down in history as never delivering a budget surplus.

This is the kind of government that is burdening Australian small business at the present time. Our plan to create a million new jobs starts with scrapping the carbon tax, which is a major cost on small business. We will cut red-tape burdens on small business by a billion dollars a year and we will create a no-nonsense one-stop shop for environmental approvals. These are the right priorities at the right time for Australia. We will make a difference—(Time expired)

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I very much welcome this opportunity to debate small business policy in this House. This is my first contribution as minister for small business, and I want to say what a great honour it is to represent small business at the cabinet table. Unfortunately, we just heard the contribution from the Leader of the National Party which was dripping in negativity, in rhetoric. This year was going to be the year of the positive agenda, of the policies being rolled out; 2013 was going to be the year when we saw the alternative government put its plans forward. Day 2 is not going very well so far—more negativity, more rhetoric, not backed up by the facts.

Now the most important thing for small business is a good economy. The most important thing for small business is the economic fundamentals. When an economy goes into recession it is small business which pays the price. If we had followed the advice of those opposite and not stimulated the economy, it would have been small businesses going to the wall. We on this side of the House know that, when there is a downturn, sometimes big businesses can have enough in reserve, can make cuts and they can get through. But small business just does not have that capacity, and when there is a recession it is small business that pays the price, so keeping Australia out of recession meant that small business did not pay that price in Australia—no thanks to the opposition, who opposed the stimulus and whose policies would have seen Australia go into recession.

So we will not be lectured by this opposition when they wanted to see policies put in place that would have seen our country follow the rest of the world into recession. Ask a small business, 'Would you prefer to be operating in the Australian economy today, or in Europe or the United States?', and you will get a very clear answer. You will get a clear answer because of the policies this government has put in place. Our economy is growing solidly, with growth around trend at 3.1 per cent, inflation at 2.2 per cent, unemployment at 5.4 per cent—one of the lowest unemployment rates in the industrialised world. And official interest rates are at three per cent, lower—despite the rhetoric of the Leader of the Nationals—than at any time under the Howard government.

Again, this side of the House understands that small business is usually heavily geared and that interest rates have a huge effect on their capacity to operate. But it is not just about the big picture, as important as the big picture is. The big picture of the strength of the economy is the most important thing for small business, and that is where this government has a very proud record indeed.

But it is also about policies for small businesses. I am delighted to have the opportunity in the House today to contrast those policies—the policies of the government and the policies of the opposition. Let us go first to tax. This government has lifted the tax-free threshold, which means that we have lifted many small businesses out of paying tax—those unincorporated businesses that are below the tax-free threshold. And this government has introduced the loss carry-back, which allows companies which make a profit one year and a loss the next to claim a refund on the tax paid. This is not just something that gives assistance to companies that have made a loss, which is very important; it is something which encourages companies to take risks, to innovate, to improve their productivity. It is something we are very proud of. Of the 110,000 businesses which will benefit from this initiative, most will be small businesses.

And of course we have introduced the instant asset tax write-off, which allows small business to claim a deduction for the full value of each new asset costing up to $6,500 after one year—not only a tax benefit, but a red-tape benefit. The Leader of the Nationals talked about us piling red tape on. This is an initiative which takes red tape away, because instead of depreciating something over a long period of time, it is an instant write-off. I am not sure the opposition understands that: it is an instant write-off, not only reducing the tax burden but reducing the red-tape burden.

Those are some of the positive things the government has done. But the contrast is even greater than that, because this opposition has a policy of scrapping measures that were introduced along with a carbon price and the Minerals Resource Rent Tax—like these measures. This is an opposition that will increase tax on small business by abolishing these measures. This is an opposition that will go to an election with a policy of increasing tax on small business. This is not an opposition that is in any position to lecture the government on the tax burden on small business.

The Leader of the Nationals could have taken the opportunity of using the MPI in this spirit of a positive agenda to explain to the small businesses of Australia why they will abolish the tax breaks that this government has introduced. Perhaps the shadow minister for small business would like to do it in his contribution—explain their policy to Australia's small business people: why will you abolish these tax cuts that have been introduced by this government?

Last year we all saw an extraordinary scene in this House—something I must say I never thought I would see in my time in the House of Representatives. We saw the Liberals and the Nationals walking into this House to vote against a corporate tax cut. And we saw them walk into the other place to vote with the Greens to stop that corporate tax cut! The Leader of the Nationals has the hide to lecture us about the Greens, when he voted with them to stop Australia's business, including incorporated small businesses, getting a tax cut. The shadow minister for small business is in no position to lecture anybody in this House. Nobody on that side is in a position to lecture us about tax on small business when they have a policy of abolishing our tax breaks and opposing a reduction in the corporate tax rate. Instead, they have the hide to continue with this campaign of fear about the carbon price, which has been shown again and again to be based on falsities.

I do want to talk about some of the other key and positive initiatives that this government has introduced in relation to small business. Some would say some of these are symbolic, but I do not think they are. The fact that we have a cabinet minister representing small business is important. The last time it happened was just before John Howard took the small business portfolio out of cabinet in 2001. This Prime Minister has brought small business back into the cabinet—so, when the big decisions are being made around the cabinet table, there is somebody looking out for small business. I hope the shadow minister for small business has some confidence that he would enter cabinet in an Abbott government. I am not sure that he would, but I hope for his sake that he would—in the unfortunate event of an Abbott government.

The first Small Business Commissioner was introduced by the Victorian Labor government in 2003. And this Labor government has introduced a Small Business Commissioner in 2013—an advocate for small business. We see these around the country in different states. My Queensland colleagues would be able to remind the House that we see it in many a state but certainly not in Queensland, where the Newman government abolished the Office of Small Business Commissioner. You dare say that you would be the friends of small business, when a state Liberal National Party government abolishes the advocate for small business in their first year in office.

There are other matters to be discussed in relation to small business. There is one very important one; for me, it is the kicker. It is one of the most positive small business policies that you could think of. It is called the National Broadband Network.

We all know that the Leader of the Opposition had some pretty shocking interviews on the 7.30 Report. There was the one where he said that the only things you can believe are the things he writes down. That was a good one! Then there was the one where he said that he had not read the press release from BHP about a mine closure that he had been talking about all day and he was not sure of his facts. But in the top three is that 7.30 Report interview from the election campaign, where the Leader of the Opposition said that the NBN was all about letting kids download movies more quickly, and therefore it was not a priority. In that one interview he showed that he does not understand the importance of the National Broadband Network for Australia, for our economy and for small business.

The NBN is very popular with small business because they know what the Leader of the Opposition does not: it enables them to grow their markets. You could be a small business anywhere in Australia, in any electorate in Australia, in any town, and you could have all of Australia as your market. Indeed, you could have all of the world as your market.

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Macca understands this.

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Groom understands, but the Leader of the Opposition does not understand how important the NBN is for Australia's small businesses. An Abbott government will see the National Broadband Network stopped stone dead. It is not just me who says this. There are small businesses around the country who have said how much they benefit from the National Broadband Network. They have said how much they appreciate the benefits brought to them by the NBN. They have said that it reduces their costs, that they have a larger market, that they are able to sell across the country. And they will be very disappointed to see the National Broadband Network stopped on the election of an Abbott government.

Honourable members know about the small businesses in their electorates. Those honourable members who have the NBN coming through their electorates will have had their chambers of commerce saying how great it is. Those honourable members who have to wait a little longer will have had their chambers of commerce saying, 'Please, can we get it quicker.' They will get it not at all under a Liberal government. Again, they have the hide to lecture us!

We have a pattern here, across all these things. It is a pattern of rhetoric about small business. The Liberal Party claim to be the friends of small business but deliver nothing for small business. They take small business for granted. And this is not just my view; it is also the view of the body which represents small business: COSBOA, the Council of Small Business of Australia. They recently put out a publication entitled COSBOA: the year 2012 and what we expect in 2013, and under sections titled '2012—the year that was' there was 'Engagement with the government', which I will come back to, and 'Engagement with the opposition'. In that section they said:

We stated our concern last year that there are still people in the Liberal Party who believe that all small businesses vote for the coalition and therefore there is no need to do anything special for the small business community. We still have that concern … It is time that the whole of the coalition came to recognise that small businesses and independent contractors are in fact a mainstay of the economy and need fairness and transparency in policy and process.

That is not a ringing endorsement. That is the small business community of Australia saying, 'We are being taken for granted by the opposition—by the alternative government.' It is the peak body of small business saying, 'We have had enough of the lip service. We have had enough of the rhetoric. We have had enough of the small talk. We want to see some action and some policies, and they have none.' And they are very concerned and they will continue to say it.

This is what they said about the government:

We have been in regular contact with the Small Business Minister … and his advisers and expect this to continue … This level of interest and dialogue is welcomed and is recognition from the government that we count as citizens of Australia.

There is a bit of a different tone when they are talking about the government's approach, because COSBOA, as the peak body representing small business in Australia, has recognised the concrete measures taken by the government to help small business. We do not just talk about it. We do not just pay them lip service. We do not insult them with cheap rhetoric. We do not mislead people about vilification, as the Leader of the Nationals did at the dispatch box a few moments ago—and he could not back it up with one single fact. He could not back it up with one single example. He was strong on rhetoric as always, as is the entire opposition when it is about small business. He is happy to pay them lip service and happy to insult them but not happy to give them concrete policies.

As long as I am the Minister for Small Business serving in the cabinet and as long as the Labor Party is in office we will talk about small business. We will talk about their importance to the economy. We will talk about them being the engine room of growth, but we will do something more than that: we will back it up with policies. We will back it up with support. We will back it up with action. We will do something for small business in this country—something the Liberal Party has not done and, under this Leader of the Opposition, continues not to do.

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

There must be an air of despair across small businesses in Australia. There you heard the new minister. He is the minister for tertiary education, skills, science, research and—quick, we had better bolt it on—small business. In his first address to the parliament he is saying that everything is just peachy. He is saying, 'All is peachy in the big picture, and isn't that great for small business?' And he followed that by wind and bluster—an empty vacuous contribution saying that all this government can offer is more of the same.

Minister, you might have been in the job for five minutes and your average in the last four jobs might have been a little over three months, but let me share something with you: the last thing small businesses in Australia want is more of the same. They are tired of being taken for granted. They are disillusioned by your disinterest. It is the way this Labor government talks down to the men and women who mortgage their houses and show great courage to create opportunities for themselves, for their workforce and for the communities they are a part of, and the way this government talks only to big business and big unions, in the big government way that we just heard from this new small business minister, that is causing the disillusionment. This is why there is an air of despair among small businesses—and all this new minister can say is that there will be more of the same. That was exactly what they said at the last election.

I remember debating the then Minister for Small Business, five small business ministers ago. I remember debating him in Kevin Rudd's electorate in Brisbane. All he could say to the assembled audience was, 'We don't have a new small business policy, just more of the same.' They took no policy to the last election, were condemned by the small business community for being so disinterested in their concerns and they were treated accordingly by the Australian small business community in the way they voted at that election. Have they learnt anything from that? Absolutely not—they seem to have learnt nothing. They want to continue to demoralise the sector which, when it looks to Canberra, would like to see an ally, an advocate.

Small business hoped that at least the government might be ambivalent and not cause harm to small business, but decisions like the carbon tax have been designed to cruel small business, to punish them. They get none of the support, none of the hush money, none of the carve-outs, but they are told by this Gillard Labor government to suck it up or pass it on to their consumers, when small business know that life is not like that in the real world.

We have seen no new ideas from this government. This seems to be the pattern they will continue to follow. The small business community were hoping that the fifth small business minister in five years might show some interest in their concerns and their interests, but sadly we have seen just more of the same. In fact, the only contribution to small business success that this Gillard government has achieved is for the printing industry, as they repeatedly reprint business cards for small business ministers—four in the last 14 months! It is a printing-led recovery. I hope a small business actually gets some of that stationery and letterhead work, because that is all Labor have done. The only consistent record we have seen from this government about small business is that they are making it smaller.

Contrast that with the positive plan that the coalition has, a plan of real solutions. Not only is small business front and centre in the thinking of the coalition but also it is the centrefold. The centrefold of Our Plan: Real Solutions for all Australians shows example after example, commitment after commitment, measure and reform after measure and reform about what we need to do to get business back into small business, to restore hope, reward and opportunity. Contrast that with what we have just heard—more of the same. 'Everything's peachy. The Gillard government's got it all sorted and aren't we good to small business.' The minister quotes one person who may have been duchessed by an invitation to the Prime Minister's XI and they reach for that like a life raft when, everywhere else you look, every other informed, considered, rigorous commentary and assessment of the fate of small business paints a very different picture.

Let us look at it. Small business is having a tough run of it now and the government does not seem to recognise that, nor does it care. Small business confidence, business conditions, cash flow, profitability, employment: they are all in negative territory, if you look at the latest National Australia Bank quarterly small business survey. Ask CPA Australia. Small business confidence in Australia is significantly less than it is in Indonesia, in New Zealand and in Malaysia. In fact, a recent survey revealed that only six per cent of small businesses in Australia think the Gillard government is doing a decent job, so 94 per cent do not think they are doing a decent job. You can see why. Small business has been burdened with the weight of the carbon tax.

In terms of the small business contribution to employment, when the Howard government left office more than half, 51.3 per cent, of the private sector workforce was employed in small business. There were more than five million people earning a livelihood out of small business—those courageous small business men and women who create opportunities for themselves and for others. What is the record today? The Leader of the National Party presented the figures up to June 2009, but I can go further. The most recent survey shows that there are 4.8 million people employed in small business, substantially less than the more than five million who were employed when the Howard government left office, and that is after five and a bit years of this government. They boast about trend growth, they boast about population growth and they boast about the size of the economy. In that context, not only in percentage terms but in nominal terms, small business employment has decreased. Today it is 45.7 per cent of the private sector workforce. There are over 10,000 fewer employing small businesses and you see this at a time when there is seven per cent growth in the population and 19 per cent growth in GDP, yet small business continues to contract. We see record levels of insolvency, a falling off the cliff in the number of small business start-ups, and the government wants to pat themselves on their backs for their performance. With red tape there are more than 200 new or amended regulations for every one that has been repealed.

The cost of small business finance is increasing. The Labor government does not want to turn itself to the fact that the average standard variable small business loan rate under the coalition was 8.89 per cent. It is now 10.16 per cent—with the margin on top of the cash rate that real people had to pay. No-one pays the cash rate for their finance. In terms of the spread, the real rate that they are paying above the cash rate has doubled. Where is the reward for those men and women who mortgage their houses to secure their finances? Do you see improved availability of finance? No. Do you see improved affordability? No—it has actually gone the other way.

On Labor's watch the whole banking sector has seen a further gravitation to the big banks, and non-bank and second-tier lenders, a crucial area from which small business gets its finance, have shrunk in the economy. That is why we have committed to conduct an inquiry into the competitiveness and stability of the financial services sector. There have been four ministers in this rotation and a tax office war on independent contractors; 5,800 small businesses targeted by the ATO have simply paid default tax assessments because they could not challenge or fight or afford to correct the ATO's mistakes. That is not our line; that is the inspector-general's assessment. And now there is another $390 million in a campaign where the ATO is going to go after small business.

In the MYEFO, where the government had its last look at the economy, the only mention of growth in small business and positive initiatives was what was happening in China.

Instead, there was nearly $400 million allocated to go after small business in another tax office press which will give small business the burden of trying to paper over the holes in this government's woeful budget.

This is a time when small business needs to be celebrated. It needs to be respected. It needs to be recognised and acknowledged, as it was in the Leader of the Opposition's National Press Club address where he said, 'Thank you'. This was a clear recognition of the men and women of small business who take risks to create opportunities in this country. Contrast that with the Prime Minister: there was no mention whatsoever of small business in her speech. Believe me, that was recognised and acknowledged.

So where are we now? We have got Labor's recent couple of copycat, watered down policy announcements. Labor have lifted policy commitments made by the coalition, hashed their implementation and now want to pat themselves on the back for what they have done. That is what we have got. We can contrast that with the clear plan that the coalition has outlined: cut the carbon tax to give small business a chance to compete; cut the red tape; improve paid parental leave to put small employers on equal footing with the big behemoth employers and with the public sector; streamline the way in which superannuation contributions are handled; extend unfair contract protections to small business transactions; have an ombudsman with real teeth, not this shingle they have dangled around of a small business commissioner—let me correct the minister: it was in 1999 when the first Small Business Commissioner was appointed to the ACCC, and that was by Minister Reith and not as he sought to characterise it—a fair treatment of independent contractors to end this attack on self-employment that is going on under this government; a cabinet level minister; representation on key regulatory and economic bodies; a long overdue review of the competition laws, which has not been done for 22 years ago since Professor Hilmer did it. It is nothing of interest to the Labor government. They have got nothing to offer. Small businesses know the coalition is there for them. (Time expired)

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I congratulate the member for Dunkley on one thing: that was the fastest speech I have ever seen delivered in this place. And why wouldn't it be? As the shadow minister for small business and as a person who is never, or very rarely, allocated a question in this place on small business matters, the member for Dunkley just assumed he would have a 15-minute speech this afternoon. He assumed that he would be leading the debate in this place on a very, very specific matter of public importance on small business. But, alas—and I feel for the member for Dunkley—this debate was led by the Leader of the Nationals. That is some sort of oxymoron or contradiction in terms—the Leader of the National Party leading a debate on an MPI.

I was intrigued that the member for Dunkley spent so much time—and he used a prop, so I hope you will excuse me for using one briefly—talking about this document: 'Our plan: real solutions for all Australians'. Maybe the reason the Leader of the National Party was given a guernsey is because his photo is on the front of that document. The member for Dunkley is missing. The opposition understood that with no member for Dunkley, the shadow minister for small business, on the front cover that they had better lead with the Leader of the National Party.

The member made a big deal about this document. This is my second prop. I will be very quick. Here is the plan: this one pager here. I will just go through it quite quickly. 'Helping small business'—there is a bit of a blurb about the importance of small business. We all agree. If there is one thing that both parties in this place seem to agree on, it is the important role that small business plays in this country. So say all of us. There is no argument there.

Then they talk about lowering taxes for small business. How are they going to do it? They are going abolish the carbon tax—surprise, surprise! They do talk about corporate tax, but there is no information and no detail about how this is going take place, be done or be funded. Remember that we have reductions in taxation, including for those in small business, linked to the carbon tax and the mining tax. Of course, they are going to get rid of all of those. It is the magic pudding again! Then they are going to reduce red tape for small business by a billion dollars. Can you imagine how the member for Dunkley or the shadow Treasurer in their offices calculated that on the computer or on the calculator, working out how they were going to reduce small business red tape and green tape by a billion dollars. I invite the opposition to allow their next speaker in this debate to explain how that has been calculated and exactly which regulation is going to be removed.

They have a crack at the tax office. That is sport for all of us, of course. The tax office were never hard on small business when they were in government—of course not! That never happened! I was the shadow Assistant Treasurer in this place and watched day by day as then Assistant Treasurers—both Mal Brough and now shadow minister Peter Dutton—walked in here correcting, day after day, tax bills they had amended and had to re-amend because of the adverse impact on small business and business more generally.

Then they are going to double the annual rate of small business growth. Sorry? They are going to double the rate of small business growth? So there are going to be four million small businesses by the end of the Abbott government's first term? I can only assume that is what that means.

They are going to review competition law. They had 11½ years in government to review competition law and did nothing. They will do nothing if they have another opportunity in the future. Of course, there is the old chestnut—extending unfair contract protection to small business. IR is always a big feature, but what they do not do, again, is give any detail, because we know it is back to Work Choices. They will go back to Work Choices.

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

It is not even IR, you genius!

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is IR related, Member for Dunkley, and you know what it is about. Of course, contract protections for small business is okay between small and large businesses. That is the manifesto that the member for Dunkley spent so much time focusing on.

In many ways, the more things change the more they stay the same. The conservative political party in this country spend a lot of time talking about small business outside of this place but very little time talking about it inside this place. They take it for granted. They think it is their natural constituency, but they should understand that many small businesses in this country—many that I speak to—know that their real allegiance is to the big businesses of this country.

That is where they get their campaign funds and that is why, when I look at unfair contracts, competition policy and other matters, I have a bit of a laugh. They have never lifted a finger in this place through the Trade Practices Act to improve the standing and the competitiveness of small businesses against larger businesses.

I have been saying in this place for 17 years that there are only three critical things a government needs to do for small business. First, it needs to grow the economy, which this government is doing miraculously in the face of the biggest global economic downturn since the Great Depression. Second, it needs to keep the price of money, the price of borrowing, low; keep interest rates low. Interest rates in this country are at a historical low. The member for Dunkley talked about spreads, but he knows that is a matter completely outside the control of this government or any other government but rather is affected by global economic circumstances and the necessity of the banks in this country to borrow more funds onshore. The third important thing is to simply get out of the way. What hurts small business more than anything else is overregulation, and this government has a very good track record of getting out of the way of the small business community.

I spent many years in this place as the small business shadow minister, and I spent many years in this place as shadow Assistant Treasurer—a portfolio which causes one to spend a lot of time on small business issues. It is not just about the three things I mentioned; it is not just about the things we need to do and not do. It is about the things that at first blush do not appear to be related to small business—things like the National Broadband Network, which is particularly welcomed by people like me who represent rural and regional Australia because it gives small businesses in the region a competitiveness they could never have dreamed of in the absence of such technology. Of course, that is another initiative of this government that those on the other side seem determined to get rid of.

We have elevated, in the real sense, small business to the cabinet level and I am very pleased that we have a new small business minister who, like those before him, does understand small business. Minister Bowen is from Sydney's west, and that is the heartland of small business in this country. You find many traders and home marketers and people working in IT who are self-employed. Small business people and business people generally are the real creators of wealth in this country. We are committed to ensuring they remain the real creators of wealth. From this government you will not just get the sort of rhetoric we heard from the Leader of the Nationals and the member for Dunkley and that we saw in the glossy one-pager the member for Dunkley waved around today; you will get real policy initiatives and real action—the type of action that is good for small business, which will continue to grow small businesses and will give small business the opportunity to flourish and employ Australians.

It was a little unfair for the member for Dunkley to claim that small businesses are employing fewer people. We have had a mining boom, and small businesses have found it difficult to retain staff. People are taking the opportunity to earn higher incomes in the mining and associated sectors. What is the Labor Party doing? It is attempting to spread the benefits of the boom, to level the playing field and give small businesses an opportunity to compete. Perhaps they cannot compete on the wages front, but we are investing in things that do level the playing field. Infrastructure is generally part of that. It is apparent that the member for Dunkley does not understand that. I am sure the Leader of the Nationals does not understand it, and we know, having heard them so many times, that the conservative forces in this place are long on rhetoric and very light on detail. (Time expired)

Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am absolutely bemused by the contribution of the member for Hunter, but I have to say one thing: he knows more about small business than some of his colleagues. His speech made it all sound so simple—grow the economy, keep interest rates low, get out of the way of small business. We have a small business shadow minister who has been working consistently over the last couple of years, travelling around the countryside. I do need to correct the member for Hunter—it is a two-page document, not a one-page document. No wonder they do not understand the numbers!

I am pleased to speak on this matter of public importance about small businesses. I have had the wonderful privilege of representing small businesses in my electorate, and I have been a small business owner-operator. There are a few such small business people on the other side of the chamber, but not too many. It is worth reminding the House how important small business is to the Australian economy. Small- to medium-sized enterprises, employing fewer than 200 people, comprise around 99 per cent of all businesses in Australia. They also employ around 65 per cent of the workforce, or about 2.8 million people. Small business is the largest employer in Australia—something that those opposite do not recognise enough.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics there are just over two million small businesses in Australia with fewer than 20 employees. Of these, 1.3 million, or 64 per cent, are non-employing firms that comprise only the owner-manager. In terms of economic contribution, Australia's small businesses contribute around 20 per cent of GDP and 34 per cent of the value added within our private sector. Around 40 per cent are actively engaged in some form of innovation. Unlike many of our larger firms, 97 per cent of our SMEs are wholly Australian owned, and only 15 per cent have sought assistance from the government. Yet 35 per cent have reported a decrease in their profitability in recent years. In my electorate of Brisbane we have over 30,000 small businesses made up of a range of sectors including retail trade, manufacturing and accommodation.

Small business in my electorate and around the nation is really doing it tough at the moment. Unfortunately, much of the pain being felt by small business owners at the moment is due to the current policies of the Gillard government. Of course, the biggest cost pressure, the mother of all cost pressures, that has been lumped onto small business is the carbon tax. This is the tax that is adding to the cost of electricity every single moment of every single day for every single small business in Brisbane, in Queensland and all across Australia.

It is not just electricity. We have seen the cost of refrigerant gases increase by up to 300 per cent.

I was at a small supermarket the other day in Ascot which will have to pay triple the amount for their coolant if there is a breakdown. This is the same story that I hear when I go around and visit businesses that rely on refrigeration and have refrigerated products. Standard economic principles dictate that the increased cost to small business will be passed on to consumers in the form of increased prices. Then we have the mining tax—

An opposition member: Is there any compensation?

Of course there is no compensation.

An opposition member: You are joking.

There is no compensation whatsoever for small business. The mining tax is the tax that does not raise any money, but there is a sweetener. It has an adverse impact on business and investor confidence. Can you explain how this works,—and I do have our shadow minister here—how you can collect a mining tax that will raise no tax but will hurt business and investment confidence? It is not just the Liberal Party and the coalition saying this. The Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Queensland recently released its pulse survey of business conditions for the December quarter of 2012. The report states:

Queensland businesses are also conscious that the state and national economies are significantly influenced by international stability and its implications for resources demand and the value of the Australian dollar. Rightly or wrongly, the Queensland business community believe that the mining tax is currently affecting forward investment strategies across the resources sector. Equally Queensland businesses have expressed frustration over increasing business operating costs, in particular, the impact on supply costs and prices from the Carbon Tax.

There is not a day in Queensland when mining companies are not letting staff go, and it is going to get worse. One of the survey respondents from Brisbane stated:

The government has displayed greed and desperation on taxing state and federal mining companies. All this has done has halted exploration growth and development of new mining ventures. Seems crazy when the mining sector is propping the rest of the economy up.

I will move onto the issue of regulation. Big business can afford to employ administrative staff to deal with pages and pages of regulations that exist in legislation, however, small businesses cannot. Since this government came to power it has introduced over 20,000 new regulations, so it was quite interesting to listen to the member for Hunter saying, 'Just get out of the way.' It has only repealed 100. We will have a one-stop shop environmental approval process. I was very privileged to see the deregulation taskforce when they came to my electorate and talked to a number of businesses. They have been travelling around the countryside. This action is despite the Rudd government committing to a one-in one-out policy when it came to power in 2007.

I want to refer to a business in my electorate called Quality Foods. This business sells food products to tuckshops in schools across Brisbane and throughout Queensland. The business is being forced to pass on ever-increasing costs to its customers. This is resulting in schools and parents paying more for tuckshop goods. These are the practical effects of increasing costs on small business and consumers suffer. Quality Foods is lucky that they have some capacity to pass on those costs to the suffering consumers, but not every business has that option. Some businesses end up scaling back operations or closing down, causing jobs to be lost and families to be devastated.

We have the Fair Work Act which should be renamed the 'Bible of red tape' because the amount of regulation it imposes on small business is absolutely phenomenal. Recently a little cafe in my electorate close to my office closed down because the owners could not handle the burden of the red tape. They could not handle the increasing burdens—

An opposition member: And the green tape.

and the green tape—and all the other bits of tape being put on them, including their ability to stay open on the weekend. They just did not have the capacity to employ staff. So we have seen a valuable little business down the road—a wonderful little coffee and gift shop—close down.

We saw this morning ABS retail trade data for December record a seasonally adjusted 0.2 per cent fall in retail sales, the third successive monthly decline. This follows a 0.2 per cent fall in November and a 0.1 per cent fall in October. The trend data, which smooths the monthly volatility, shows that there was no growth in retail spending for the last five months of 2012. This is very concerning data. My electorate contains many retail hubs including the Queen Street Mall and the CBD. The retail sector accounts for tens of thousands of jobs around this nation. In places like Fortitude Valley, New Farm and along James Street there are a number of retail stores, cafes, coffee shops and restaurants. This is what is happening around the country: they have to bear the burden of unfair regulation—they and thousands of businesses around Australia.

I now want to turn to a local issue in my electorate that is causing much angst and inconvenience for local businesses. Australia Post has yet again decided that it is going to close another post office, this time at Albion. This is being repeated all over Australia. When we talk about increasing costs to small businesses, many small businesses around Australia will have to travel further to conduct their Australia Post business, adding, again, another impost. This government, because they are bereft of money, is closing Australia Post offices all over Australia and adding to the cost of staff being away, driving further distances and adding to their overall cost of running their small business.

I will continue to fight in this place for small business. We do have a number of plans. We have a range of plans for small business and a range of policies that will be released in the lead-up to the election. We have a very active shadow minister for small business who is working very hard to ensure that small businesses in this country have a fair go. The coalition will cut $1 billion in red tape out of the economy as part of our plan to double the rate of small business growth and to create one million new jobs over five years. We will continue to fight for small business. We will continue to make sure that they are not penalised at every turn by this Gillard government which seeks to impose unfair regulation and red tape at every single turn. (Time expired)

Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was interesting listening to the member for Brisbane talking about small business because—

Mr Ewen Jones interjecting—

Pardon?

Mr Ewen Jones interjecting—

It is interesting, particularly when a lot of the speech focused on a range of things other than small business. I thought we were here today to talk about small business.

Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You're kidding me, aren't you? My speech was about small business.

Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are talking about small business, Member for Brisbane. Like you, I too had a small business before I entered parliament. It was one of the highlights of my life. I had 10 years of a very successful business. I know the joys of having a small business. I also know the trials and tribulations of having a small business. I know the risks involved in running a small business but also the real pleasure that you get out of having a small business, the flexibility it provides, the financial security it provides—the challenges, I admit, but also the great sense of achievement that you get from having a small business.

So it was interesting, given that the member for Brisbane actually has experience of her own small business, that a lot of her speech was focused on the carbon tax, or the carbon price, as I prefer to call it—the carbon price I thought had been put to bed, given that the sky had not fallen in, given that Whyalla is still there, given that people are getting up in the morning in Whyalla, working during the day, having a nice time on the weekends and going to bed at night. Whyalla is still there, humming along, and the sky has not fallen in. I was a bit disappointed that, given that the member for Brisbane was talking about a very significant issue—that is, small business and the support that we are providing for small business—she had to focus on the hoary chestnut of the carbon price.

I was just going through this one-page document—it is one A4 page, if you look at it this way—on what those opposite plan to do to help small business create stronger jobs growth. Apart from the wonderful photos that are in here and a lovely little dinkus here of 'costed, fully budgeted', I thought it was interesting just going through each point, because most of this is happening under a Labor government. There is a point here that says that small businesses already employ half of the workforce in Australia, and yet one of the objectives here is to achieve an annual growth rate in the numbers of small business—essentially, to achieve what we have already achieved—in terms of making half the workforce part of the private sector. Here it is: 'We want small business providing more than half the jobs in the private sector.' But, in the first paragraph, they have actually said that that is already happening.

What is also interesting about this document is the fact that those opposite want to cut red tape and they want to cut green tape. A large part of my time here in parliament has been spent speaking on regulations that are being streamlined or consolidated in the business sector. I gladly get up and speak on that type of legislation because I understand the burden that overregulation and overlegislation put on running a small business, particularly a microbusiness. So, when I look at these objectives, I just think: 'Well, that is already happening, so that box is ticked. "Half the Australian workforce" is ticked.'

Then I notice that here there is an objective of achieving an annual growth rate in the numbers of small businesses of 1.5 per cent—that is new businesses starting up, I am assuming. I read a report that last year found that Australia's new business growth is actually among the best in the world. Australia recorded the third highest number of new ventures among the world's G8 economies. Apparently, during 2009-10, Australia's performance saw a 14.7 per cent increase in start-ups, despite many countries around the world struggling with the impact of the GFC. So that box is ticked.

So I am just going through all of this and wondering: what is actually new in this little one-page document, what has not been achieved by Labor or is not being worked on by Labor? I think we can take it for what it is: a little, nicely laid out A4 document. But that is about the bulk of it.

Labor have done extraordinary work in supporting small business since we came to power. Most importantly, we saved this country from the global financial crisis. Anyone in this room who has travelled overseas in the last five or six years would understand what the impact of not surviving the GFC actually means, not just for individuals, not just for families, not just for communities but, most importantly, for micro and small businesses.

I was in the States last year, going around talking to people and to small businesses about the impact that the GFC had on them. It was miraculous that these businesses had survived. There they were. They were doing it incredibly tough. Most of them had sales, with 70 to 80 per cent of their goods on sale at sale prices. The business on one side of them had been closed down. The business on the other side had been closed down. What really disturbed me the most and drove home how wonderful and successful Labor has been in saving Australia from the GFC was the fact that there were new businesses. Young people, mainly women, were trying to set up new businesses; they had just got their foot in the door with businesses, and then they had no business because of the GFC and they had to close it down. They had made all that investment in setting up a small business. They had stuck their neck out. They had taken risks. They had done what every entrepreneur and everyone with an enterprising spirit should do. They had tried to set up those small businesses, but because of the global financial crisis it all ended in tears and debt, and it also affected their entrepreneurial spirit and their spirit of innovation.

This is something that those opposite just do not understand, and I find it absolutely extraordinary. If they went overseas, if they bothered to look beyond their own backyard to see what is actually happening throughout the world, particularly the impact on small businesses, they would understand what fantastic work Labor has been doing in this country not just in terms of saving us from the GFC but also in terms of low unemployment and low interest rates—the fact that families with a $300,000 mortgage are now paying $5,000 less a year on their mortgage.

This is incredibly positive for the economy. This is incredibly positive for small business. That $5,000 is going either into savings or back into the economy—into buying a new washing machine, buying a new refrigerator or buying new shoes for school. I find it absolutely gobsmacking that those opposite can be so blinkered in terms of not accepting how monumental it is that we have survived the GFC—and not just that we have survived it but that we are in such good shape.

The other thing that we have been doing, as well as saving this country from the GFC, is investing in skills. We know that there has been a significant underinvestment in skills, and so we have put the effort into investing in skills, particularly in apprenticeships and trades. Those opposite neglected this for the whole time they were in government and, as a result of that, we are facing a skills shortage of monumental proportions. It is absolutely outrageous that when we came to power there were so few apprentices and there was so little investment in trades. Thanks to us, there are significant investments here—$1.56 billion over four years—to skill up our workforce. In addition, we have invested in our Australian Apprenticeships Incentives Program, which provides $483 million in support for small and medium enterprises to encourage employers to employ and train an apprentice or a trainee. This is vitally important to keeping this nation skilled; it is vitally important to ensuring that we have the trades to build this country for the future—the trades to build the roads and the bridges and all the other infrastructure for the future. This is vitally important.

Those opposite made the underinvestment over the years. Do not talk to us about how valuable small business is to you when you underinvested in skills and you underinvested in education. You also underinvested in infrastructure. Such investment now has provided thousands and thousands of construction jobs around this country. Do not talk to us about the importance of small business to you, particularly when you deny the value of this country surviving the GFC and the impact and benefit of that for small business.

Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I start my remarks today with congratulations to the Labor Party on at least being able to get two out of the three of their members who have a small business background to speak on this matter which concerns small business! So congratulations to the Labor Party, because it must have been exceptionally difficult for them to find such members. It would not have been difficult to find any former union officials, because they could have taken almost anybody to talk about union issues and union corruption, possibly, if they had wanted to. However, it must have been difficult for them to find at least two out of the three who have a small business background. So congratulations to them there! Unfortunately, the minister himself does not have such a background—but you cannot have everything!

This MPI is an important one because in some respects small business is at the heart of our economy. We often discuss in this chamber matters concerning the broader economy and larger businesses, but it is actually small businesses which are the engines of our employment. They are frequently the engines of entrepreneurship and also often the mechanism for people to be able to live their aspirations or to live out their dreams of creating something from scratch, to have a go and to make something of it.

When small businesses are doing well, we as a nation do well. We saw that under the Howard government, when over half the workforce were from the small business sector—in fact, 51.3 per cent. We saw that 36,000 new small businesses each year were starting up—26,000 each and every year under the Howard government. People were being rewarded through lower taxes for having a go and being successful. There were incentives, too, under the Howard government, such as the low-income tax offset for small microbusinesses to be able to get ahead.

Today, unfortunately, small businesses are not doing as well. Certainly, all of us on this side—and I would hope on the other side of the chamber—would know purely from speaking to small business owners in our electorates that they are doing it tough. We can see it in the shopping strips, where there are now, for the first time in a long time, places which are empty and which have a 'for lease' sign on the front. We have not seen that for a long time.

When you look at the statistics, they also bear out what we hear anecdotally from speaking to small businesses on the ground. There are now, for example, 14,500 fewer employing small businesses than there were at the end of the Howard government. Small business bankruptcies went up by an incredible 48 per cent in the last 12 months alone. Small business start-ups—and this is also an amazing figure—fell by 95 per cent in the last 12 months alone. Bankruptcies are up by 48 per cent and start-ups have fallen by 95 per cent. It tells me that small businesses are doing it exceptionally tough at the moment. There are many factors that go into whether a small business is successful or not, but government policy settings are critical.

My problem, and the coalition's critique of this Rudd-Gillard government, is that the government has made it so much harder for small businesses to start up and to flourish. I would like to go through two, three or four issues which have made it so much harder for small businesses. Of course the carbon tax is the most obvious one—the one which we have been debating for close to two years now. It puts up electricity costs for every small business across the country by at least 10 per cent and, in many cases, by 15 or 20 per cent. The member for Canberra said that that is a thing of the past: 'Do not worry about the carbon tax; Whyalla is still on the map, so do not worry about it.' Well, I can tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I can inform the government members: the carbon tax is real and it is still hurting, particularly those small business sectors that have high energy bills.

That includes the manufacturing sector, which is so reliant on cheap energy. The member for Brisbane mentioned earlier in this debate that refrigerant gases have gone up 300 per cent. That is what they have to deal with. That was the first issue. And I should point out that the carbon tax is $23 per tonne at the moment, but it does not stop there. Incredibly—and members of the gallery may not know this—it goes up, or is forecast to go up, to $350 per tonne by 2050. So the carbon tax is forecast to be 15 times higher than what it is today. It goes up each and every year under this arrangement the government has put in place.

The second example of the government making it considerably harder for small business is the scrapping of the entrepreneurs tax offset. That affected 400,000 microbusinesses. Here I am talking about businesses earning $75,000 or less—they have faced a 25 per cent increase in their tax bill. This is for the microbusinesses—often mum and dad owners who are just starting up and getting going, who maybe have their business running out of their own home and who are earning less than $75,000. You would not believe it, but the Labor government, who day in, day out say they are looking after the small income person, have in this regard put up taxes by 25 per cent by scrapping the entrepreneurs tax offset.

The third issue I mention is the Fair Work Act. I have coffee shop owners in my electorate—and I am sure there are restaurateurs and coffee shop owners in every electorate across the country—who are saying now that they are no longer opening their doors on Sundays or, if they are, that they are going to do the work themselves rather than taking a day off, because they cannot afford to pay for their staff—it is just not profitable to do so. They are saying it is now more burdensome to employ people. This is another difficulty for small business they have added—a disincentive to employ people. This is another reason why it is becoming so much more difficult.

The final point I mention, among a list that I could mention in today's debate, is in relation to regulations. The member for Hunter said the government should get out of the way of small business. We concur with the sentiments the member for Hunter put forward earlier in this debate. But look at what Labor have done. They promised that, if they put one regulation in, they would take one regulation away. But do you know what they have done? For every one regulation they have taken a way, they have actually added 200 regulations. They have added 20,000 regulations overall and they have removed 100. That is their record and it cuts across all of the activities of small business. Small business owners say to me, as they would say to every member of parliament, 'We are just getting bogged down with this red tape.' It is one thing on top of another on top of another and it is really starting to affect them.

This occurs, as I said at the outset, in part because there are so few people on the Labor benches who actually have experience in small business. You just have to look at the Labor small business ministers. Two out of the last four were former union leaders. They were Mark Arbib—a very well known faceless man who was the union leader, small business person—and the most recent one, Brendan O'Connor, who was also a union leader. Thankfully, Chris Bowen was not a union leader as far as I am aware, although he did come straight from the party machine and does not have any small business experience. Craig Emerson, to his credit, was not a union leader and I do believe he had some small business background as well, but he got the axe very early on.

Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He was an academic.

Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's right, he was an academic. If the government does need some instructions about what to do to help small business then I point them toward the coalition's 10-point plan, where we have outlined 10 simple points that would really help small businesses thrive and accelerate. I ask them to look at those points, examine them closely and implement them, because the course they are on is doing immense damage to the small business sector.