Ken O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to talk about the opportunities and highlight some of the restrictive pressures on the small business sector and its ability to survive. Flynn is home to 14,124 small businesses in a variety of industries, including agriculture, construction, business services, transport, mining and manufacturing. Across the country, small business is the engine room of the economy, accounting for 44.8 per cent of all employment. I will repeat that: 44.8 per cent of all employment.

The process for start-up companies is horrendous, especially when they have to go through three levels of government. The owners of a business at Gin Gin in my electorate are having trouble in getting up a quarry, which had to go through all levels of government. They started this process three years ago, and would you believe that today they are still about six months off getting all the approvals done? That is too long, and it costs the owners a lot of money.

We know that three out of four start-up businesses fail in the first 12 months. This is unacceptable. The most obvious reason is taxation. The current corporate rate of tax is 30 per cent, and that is far too high by world standards. Other advanced economies in the world are much lower than that, apart from the USA, where the President has already indicated to the world, as he has done on other issues, that he will drop that rate from 35 per cent to a 15 or 20 per cent tax rate. Canada already has 15 per cent, Denmark 22 per cent, France 15 per cent, South Korea 24.2 per cent, the Netherlands 20.5 per cent, Singapore 17 per cent and the United Kingdom 20 per cent. Even Communist China is as low as 25 per cent. So we have a long way to go to be competitive and make our businesses competitive globally.

The issue is that our farmers and our businesspeople need support. They not only have taxation issues and payroll tax issues; they have nature to contend with. We have fires, floods and droughts. I do not know which is the worst, but I think fire, as we saw in some parts of New South Wales last week, is pretty devastating to any business, because sometimes you can lose the lot, including your own house. People on the land and big businesses help small businesses become big businesses. Some big businesses become small businesses. (Time expired)