Nickolas Varvaris (Barton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer outline the impact of the budget on small businesses in Barton and other areas around the country.

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I really do thank the member for Barton for his question. It was just a fortnight ago that the member for Barton and I visited a number of his own small businesses. Shelly and Guy from Admire Florist in Bexley North were very excited to see us. They gave me some flowers, which I cannot recall ever getting from anyone. They were very excited about the budget and the $20,000 instant asset write-off. They were considering purchasing a new delivery van for their business. It was a terrific Australian story of a migrant coming to Australia and having a go in a small business. Then we went around the corner to Macchina Espresso, in Kingsgrove, and met with Harry and Jo-Anne. The coffee there is ground on site and distributed to a number of businesses in the area. He had purchased new coffee machines with the $20,000 instant asset write-off. It was a great story, because we could see in front of us the real impact of our budget and the way it was helping small business.

It is not just the $20,000 instant asset write-off, as you can tell from the reports of JB Hi-Fi and comments by Gerry Harvey at Harvey Norman, that has had a powerful impact on retail sales. The Labor Party hates that. The Labor Party hates businesses being successful. We know that. That is why they constantly complain and constantly whinge about business—but they employ thousands of people. The government does not directly employ a hell of a lot of people in Australia, but, I tell you what, business does. If you want to lift jobs, if you want to create more jobs, you have got to give business the incentive to have a go. That is why in the last month alone 38,000 new jobs were created compared with 3,600, which was the average in the last year under Labor. It does not come about easily. For a start, you have got to lift the regulatory burden off business, and that is what we have done with our dedicated repeal days in parliament. Secondly, you have got to lift the tax burden off them. That is why we got rid of the carbon tax and why we got rid of the mining tax. That is why we delivered in the budget the biggest tax cuts for more than two million Australian small businesses. Importantly, you have got to give those businesses hope that the economy will get better, despite occasional headwinds—and we are doing that. That is why we are starting to see substantial increases in some of the business confidence data, in some of the business investment data and in consumer confidence data. It all becomes a positive cycle, and it is only the coalition that can deliver that.