Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In 1936, John Maynard Keynes published The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, and one of the key insights of that book was to draw a distinction between the short run and the long run. In the short run, Keynes pointed out that it was important to have policies that would get the economy out of a temporary slump, such as that the world was in the mid-1930s. It could either be monetary policy or fiscal policy, but where it was fiscal policy he urged that it might be important to put in place temporary measures that encouraged businesses to invest over the short term to get the economy out of a hole. Keynes distinguished this from measures that might be put in place to boost long-run aggregate demand. Those measures would seek to be stable and predictable; they would not have sudden death thresholds.

Today, the House is facing a measure which, frankly, would be better crafted to get the economy out of a temporary slump than to feed long-term demand. In its policy on accelerated depreciation, the government has chopped and changed over the years. In office, Labor put in place a higher level of instant write-off, increasing the threshold from $1,000 to $6,500—a stable and sustainable level which we felt would do a great deal to encourage investments by firms. Accelerated depreciation has good economic insights behind it. By acceleration depreciation schedules firms have a greater incentive to purchase fixed assets for their businesses. Under the expenditure tax laws in place in Australia, the GST allows you to write off inputs in the same year as you pay the tax, further up the chain. But, in the case of company tax or personal tax, the items are depreciated over succeeding years. Accelerated depreciation tips the hand of a business owner towards putting in place investment that they might not otherwise have done. It is, in the view of many economists, a more efficient way of incentivising investment than changing the corporate rate.

But the key question is whether or not it is best done in a stable way which provides clear predictability or with sudden death cliffs. When Labor put out measure in place we did so at a $6,500 level, because we felt that that was what the economy could bear going forward. But yet in the coalition's first budget they decreased that threshold, taking it down from $6,500 to $1,000. Then, in their second budget, in the 2015 budget, they increased up to $20,000 but with a sudden death cut-off of 30 June 2017. The government now proposes to push out that cut-off to 30 June 2018, which pushes the problem down the road but does not put in place a stable level of accelerated depreciation for small business entities. Labor has held a clear and consistent position on accelerated depreciation. We opposed the government when they cut the accelerated depreciation threshold from $6,500 to $1,000. When the government increased it to $20,000, we also warned that that might be a level that was not sustainable. Indeed, this bill reflects the government's own concerns about the sustainability of a $20,000 threshold, because again a sudden death threshold is put in place. To look at accelerated depreciation threshold under the coalition is to look at a mountain range—a threshold which started at $6,500 dollars, plummeted to $1,000, went back up to $20,000 and then is scheduled now under this bill to drop back down again.

Let me be clear: Labor supports accelerated depreciation, and I have outlined the strong economic principles behind this. In that, we stand alongside the Council of Small Business Australia, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman and the Institute of Public Accountants. We recognise the value of a accelerated depreciation but, unlike the government, we also recognise the importance of setting policies for the long-term. Labor's small business policies are intended to create enduring growth. When we committed to the National Broadband Network with fibre to the premises and to getting the gigabit speeds that NBN connections with fibre to the home can now generate, we put in place a long-term policy. When Labor commits to investing in our schools, providing the human capital that small businesses need, again it is long-term investment. These things matter. I held a small business roundtable in Burnie. I was speaking to a small business owner there about his frustrations with the National Broadband Network. He told the story of the fact that with his small business he often has to upload large design files. He will set the upload going, walk down to the local cafe, come back and often finding the upload is still going. His connection is buffering and his business is suffering. The policies of this government on education also leave much to be desired. By ripping money out of schools and out of universities, the latest budget takes away the productive potential for Australian small businesses. Australian small businesses need a better human capital workforce than this government is giving to them. They need policies for the long-term, not sugar hits for the short-term.

Labor has also committed to access to justice reforms, and we took that to the last election. They will provide an opportunity for small businesses to take anticompetitive behaviour to court. Currently small businesses are deterred from taking up private litigation against anticompetitive behaviour because they are concerned about the armies of lawyers that the big end of town can array against them. The risk of having to pay the other side's legal fees if the action is unsuccessful is a significant deterrent. Labor's access to justice reforms restore the balance by letting small businesses request a 'no adverse costs' order early in a court case. It will help level the playing field and encourage more small businesses to take on anticompetitive behaviour and it reflects Labor's strong commitment to a level playing field in our competition laws. Labor believes that we need to have tougher penalties for anticompetitive conduct and that we need to double the ACCC's litigation budget. Labor believes that it is important for small businesses to be protected from dodgy phoenix operators through a director identification number, dealing with the fact that it is currently almost possible to register your dog as a director. The tax commissioner told the Senate yesterday, when answering a question from Senator Williams, that he could register Senator Williams as a director in a firm that he controlled and Senator Williams would not even know about it. That is why we need a director identification number: to protect honest small businesses. Labor's phoenixing policy also increases the penalties and gets the standard of proof right. These are pro small business measures from this side of the House.

But this measure, which is assisting small and medium businesses—by extending the turnover threshold from $2 million to $10 million—has a troubling deadline coming down the track. We on this side of the House are concerned that small businesses get the stability they need from a terribly unstable government. This government has chopped and changed prime ministers and ministers in portfolios across the board. We have had multiple ministers responsible for almost every single policy. Indeed, one of the policy areas for which I am responsible, the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission, has had no fewer than five coalition ministers responsible for it under the Abbott-Turnbull government.

Providing stability is about more than three word slogans such as 'jobs and growth'; it is about making sure that our tax laws, our competition laws and, indeed, our litigation rules are appropriate to look after the needs of small business. Labor's competition policies are pro-consumer but they will also assist start-up businesses. In Australia, we have had a troubling stagnation in the rate of new business formation over recent years. In a piece in the Monthly recently, Adam Triggs and I pointed out that, over the past couple of decades, we have seen a significant ramp-up in merger activity and a significant stagnation in small business start-up rates. One of the ways of spurring that is through appropriate competition laws. Labor's proposal is that we increase the civil penalties in the Australian Consumer Law from $1.1 million to $10 million. And we are very pleased this year to see the government finally falling into line and adopting that policy in the budget.

But we also call on the government to adopt the other pro-competition pro-small-business policies that we have been calling for. We call on them to adopt the European Union's penalty system for anti-competitive conduct. It is based on 30 per cent of the annual sales of the relevant product or service multiplied by the number of years over which the infringement took place and limited to the greater of 10 per cent of annual turnover or $2 million. We call on the government to double the ACCC's litigation budget from its current $24.5 million to $49 million.

We call on the government to give the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission an independent market studies power so it is able to undertake its own investigations on issues such as pricing discrepancies and increased market concentration. The government has called the consumer watchdog in on recent months over issues such as energy and the banking sector. But if the consumer watchdog had a market studies power, it could immediately be on the case rather than waiting to be given those additional powers on an ad hoc basis by the government of the day. Labor wants the act amended to apply higher penalties for conduct that targets or disproportionately impacts disadvantaged Australians and to encourage the consumer watchdog to focus its investigatory efforts on cases that affect disadvantaged Australians.

It is important that competition law, which goes back to the Trade Practices Act 1974—a great achievement of the Whitlam government—works for consumers and firms. Labor is the party of the Trade Practices Act; national competition policy under the Hawke and Keating governments; and the Australian Consumer Law and the criminalisation of cartels under the Rudd and Gillard government, with the leadership of the member for McMahon, Chris Bowen. Australians can trust Labor to get it right on competition policies and stable economic policies. Through our Access to Justice policy, our competition reforms and our commitment to ensuring the tax policies are right for the long term, Labor is truly the party of small business. We recognise that the measures in this bill will provide assistance to small and medium businesses. But we again raise our reservations about a measure which would have been recognised by Keynes, writing two generations ago, as better suited to temporary stimulus than to the ongoing stable policy that Australian small and medium size businesses so desperately need.

Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why is it that whenever members opposite, members of the Labor Party, rise to make statements like we have just heard, that Labor is the party for small business and competition policy, they can only ever refer to the Hawke-Keating era? I think they are purposely ignoring the fact that they did go through that disastrous Rudd-Gillard-Rudd era, an era that they now wish to wash away from modern history, despite the fact that ever since that era, right through until today, the Labor Party has continued to be a party for the union movement only, and certainly not for small business. It is a party that has sought to stand in the way of reforms to competition policy that will level the playing field.

Let me come to Hawke and Keating in a few moments. I rise today in support of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Accelerated Depreciation For Small Business Entities) Bill 2017. There is little doubt that in the broad sweep of Australian politics it is the coalition that truly respects and understands the vital role that some 3.2 million small businesses, businesses employing 5.6 million people, play in our national economy. In the now distant past, during that Hawke-Keating golden age of reform to which the previous member referred, Labor did offer a very uncharacteristic glimpse of understanding of the small business sector. For a short while they supported the crucial role of that sector as the engine room of jobs and growth in the Australian economy. They did so, I probably should add, with support from the coalition, then the opposition.

However, such glimpses of hope from Labor are rare, and all too often it has fallen to the coalition, and the coalition alone, to restore and repatriate the confidence of small-business operators to a point where they again look to expand, to pursue new ideas by investing in themselves and creating jobs. In fact, helping small business, can I say, is part of our DNA. For generations the great Liberal Party, together with our coalition partners the Nationals and the old Country Party before them, have worked to support and give voice to millions of hardworking small business people and professionals, not to mention the millions of people they employ. These were Menzies's forgotten people, vividly brought to life only last week at Old Parliament House on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of Sir Robert's landmark broadcast of 22 May 1942.

Mr Brian Mitchell interjecting—

I note that the members opposite who are calling out are very regretful that they were unable to attend at last week's event, for indeed they have listened to its recording since and they have taken some notes. There is no doubt that it is never too late for the Labor Party to learn from the great Robert Menzies, and I am delighted that members opposite clearly agree with that sentiment today.

But we are a long way from 1942, when Menzies made that wonderful speech. Or are we? Certainly we still have the lifters and leaners. We still have radical trade unions in the form of today's CFMEU and others. There is no heckling when I make that statement, so let me repeat it for the members opposite: we still do have those radical trade unions in the form of today's CFMEU and others. I note their heads are now buried in their chairs. Such groups are committed to workplace disruption and extortion, often backed up by the threat of violence, with no respect for the rule of law whatever. The new ACTU secretary is an obvious case in point. We still have big business, which today is even bigger business—vast multinationals—many acting as good corporate citizens while a powerful minority seek to siphon off huge fortunes in undeclared Australian tax dollars to low-tax jurisdictions elsewhere. And we still have the forgotten people, which include approximately 3.2 million small businesses, and their largely non-unionised staff—businesses that include the builders, the IT technicians, the bakers and heaven knows how many cafe owners. These are all members of today's forgotten people.

But they are not forgotten by the coalition, and certainly not forgotten by the Turnbull government. While Labor threatens to unpick the government's Enterprise Tax Plan at every opportunity and turns its back on small businesses, the Turnbull government is getting on with the business of delivering, of helping businesses to invest in the opportunities they need to grow and, most importantly, the opportunities that will help them generate jobs. By any measure, the government's instant asset write-off, or its accelerated depreciation treatment, which offers an immediate tax deduction with a threshold of $20,000 for newly acquired assets, has been an outstanding success. By extending this instant asset write-off for a further 12 months to 30 June 2018 while also providing broad incentives to cut red tape and changing the definition of small businesses to include those enterprises that have an annual turnover of up to $10 million, the coalition is delivering for today's forgotten people.

When first introduced in the 2015-16 tax year, the temporary increase in the instant asset write-off threshold, from $1,000 to $20,000, delivered an almost 30 per cent increase in the number of taxpaying entities claiming the deduction, while the dollar value claimed increased by some 140 per cent. And keep in mind that this was when it was limited to only $2 million businesses. With the recent change in definition of a small business from one with just up to a $2 million turnover to one with a $10 million turnover, the Turnbull government has yet again demonstrated how seriously it wants to deliver for this sector.

That reform of changing the definition will give access to the instant asset write-off for the forthcoming tax year to approximately 90,000 additional small businesses across Australia. To the mums and dads who own their own business, to the young entrepreneurs wanting to catch a break and to those who need a job or just more hours, this is very good news. While the extension of the instant asset write-off to 30 June 2018 is estimated to cost the budget $650 million over the forward estimates, and while the government holds budget repair as a key priority, this temporary measure to improve cash flow and capital investment for small business will not only create jobs but also boost productivity across the sector.

Small businesses, by their very nature, are generally more vulnerable and exposed to sudden adverse trading conditions. Such heightened trading risk and volatility, together with major capital expenditures early in the life of the new business, puts a significant strain on cash flow. This proves fatal for many fledgling enterprises. The opportunity for immediate deductibility will on most occasions improve cash flow for small businesses by allowing an instant deduction, in full, of up to $20,000 per item in the year the cost was incurred up to 30 June 2018. The small business sector is saying, 'Alleluia!'

A meaningful reduction in compliance costs, long the bane of small businesses, is a further but by no means insignificant benefit. There is a significant regulatory saving for small businesses not needing to maintain a depreciation schedule for assets up to the $20,000 threshold mark. No wonder this measure is popular, including with those opposite in the chamber today, who wish for this measure to go on for eternity. Although we would like to see that happen, we make this commitment time bound, because we on this side of the House understand the ongoing importance of fiscal discipline and the critical need to repair a budget that was so woefully damaged by those opposite when they were on the Treasury benches. James Pearson, CEO of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said:

Small businesses are particularly pleased to see the highly successful instant asset write-off extended to June 2018 …

Innes Willox, CEO of the Ai Group, said following the Treasurer's speech:

… the Budget provides a substantial boost for smaller businesses by lowering tax burdens, extending asset write-off eligibility and cutting red tape.

Andrew Conway, CEO of the Institute of Public Accountants, said:

We welcome this Budget for Australia's small businesses. This Budget provides small businesses with further confidence to employ, invest and grow.

The quotes from authoritative and respected business leaders are endless, but I will not go on, for they all reinforce the same point—that is, a uniform and glowing praise for this initiative and, moreover, for a federal budget that is poised to deliver so much for all Australians.

The temporary extension to June 2018 of the instant asset write-off of up to $20,000 for small businesses forms part of a broader, more comprehensive platform of targeted incentives under the government's 2017 budget that will help small businesses grow and deliver more jobs. Other key measures include small business tax cuts, reducing to 27½ per cent from 1 July this year; increasing the eligibility for small business tax concessions; a simpler BAS mechanism; the small business restructure rollover, removing the tax burden for small businesses that seek to transfer active assets; the scrapping of $5.8 billion in red tape; the easing of raising capital via crowdfunding changes; the clamping down on tax avoidance by large multinationals; and helping to create a level playing field for small businesses by taking action to prevent the misuse of market power. These reforms, taken together, show how serious the Turnbull coalition government is about helping small businesses and the millions of hardworking Australians they employ.

This is truly a coalition government cast in the image of Robert Menzies, that great leader of our nation, one with an unchangeable resolve—to always represent and fight for the 'Forgotten People'. It is for that reason that I wholeheartedly commend this bill to the House.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that this bill be now read a second time. I call the honourable member for Parramatta and I want to compliment her on her coat of many colours.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. It is a local design, yet again—on indulgence. I am pleased to rise to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Accelerated Depreciation For Small Business Entities) Bill 2017. It is a bill that extends the current instant asset depreciation for small business from July 2017 through another year to 1 July 2018. As members opposite have said, and as members on this side have said, there are many businesses that are appreciative of this opportunity to depreciate their assets upfront rather than going through the usual lengthy depreciate process over several years. Depreciation in this way is a very effective way to incentivise investment. The official way it is put is that it encourages capital investment by small business through lowering the pre-tax rate of return required to justify new investments. What that essentially means is that it helps cash flow. So when a business buys an asset up to $20,000 in this financial year it can depreciate that asset in full in the tax for that year rather than doing that over several years. So it does not actually reduce the amount, but it brings it forward. In doing so, it is a cash-flow benefit.

One of the problems I have with this bill is that it handles depreciation, which is an incredibly important incentivising tool, in a rather inconsistent way. I am going to talk a little bit about the history of instant asset depreciation because it is six or seven years old now. It was first introduced in the Tax Laws Amendment (Stronger, Fairer, Simpler and Other Measures) Bill 2011 by the previous Labor government when the Labor government increased the threshold from $1,000 to $6,500 as part of a broader package of tax reforms. It was within the period of the global financial crisis. It was also stimulatory.

I remember going out to my community at the time and talking to businesses that provided equipment to other businesses, whether that was refrigeration, air conditioning or solar panels, and walking through with them how this bringing forward of depreciation could actually benefit them in their selling of assets to business. It was actually designed to be stimulatory and to stimulate investment by the small business sector, and it was effective. It was passed in 2011 and introduced in 2012. It was $6½ thousand in perpetuity. We just raised the threshold. Small business knew that, from that point forward, that would be the rule. It meant that they did not have to adjust their investment decisions around changing rules. They knew what they were; they were there, we thought, in perpetuity. It was a good thing. It was a recommendation made by experts in the tax field and it was one that we were pleased to take up at that time.

Unfortunately, when the Abbott government was elected one of the first things it did in the 2014 budget was abolish the $6½ thousand threshold and take it back down to $1,000. So it was introduced in 2012; in 2014, it went from $6½ thousand back down to $1,000. It was something that we thought was a strange decision from a government that considered itself to be pro-business. It was a government that would get up and talk about how it supported small business, yet one of its first actions was to take away something that was actually greatly appreciated by small business.

Then, a little while later, we saw that the government changed its mind. In 2016, we saw the asset threshold raised to $20,000 for two years. So in the budget—in 2015, I think—it was announced that it would go up to $20,000. It was $6½ thousand; it was reduced down to $1,000; a couple years later, they increased it again up to $20,000. But it was only for two years. It was only up until 1 July 2017. This meant that small businesses were now in a position where, if they bought their assets before 30 June, they had favourable treatment on their cash flow. If they bought them after 30 June 2017, they were back down to $1,000 again. In my community I was talking to businesses about that. It calls businesses, in many ways, to plan their investment decisions around the changing tax rate—around the changing threshold for depreciation. That is never a good thing. I remember saying to businesses, 'I can't give you advice, but this is cash flow here. You don't invest in something because of this, you invest in something that you need. You should do it in the time frame that suits your business.' This, of course, was an incredibly powerful incentive for businesses to think about their investment strategies in relation to the threshold. When the cliff comes on 30 June 2017, you are back to $1,000. It is quite a different story than if you buy the month before.

Now we have the government, in May, announcing that it is extending one more time, up until July 2018. We on this side of the House are going to support it. As we said in 2011 when we introduced the initial accelerated depreciation, it is a very effective way of incentivising investment. But we would argue that it is more a way of incentivising investment in the long term if it is actually consistent—if you do not keep changing the rules and causing businesses to alter their investment strategies to maximise the benefit from the rules before they change again. Now we have had, in 2012, from $1,000 to $6,500; in 2014 up to $20,000; there was supposed to be a cliff in July this year and now it is extended for a year. In July 2018 we go back to $1,000.

We are going to support it, and there will be many businesses that manage to use this accelerated depreciation to invest in ways that they otherwise might not have thought possible because of the lengthy depreciation schedule. It is a good thing, but we would argue very strongly that if the government has a genuine commitment to using accelerated depreciation as an investment incentive, they should choose a number that they think is sustainable over the long term and apply that, so that business can actually go about its long-term planning of its investment decisions rather than changing them from year to year as the government changes its mind. So it is good for some, but not as good as it would be if we had a government that was genuinely using accelerated depreciation as more than a marketing ploy, as a genuine indication of its commitment to small business.

I said in the appropriation speech this morning that in many ways the government has, rather than a vision, a storyboard. It decides how to make something look good and that is what it announces. In some ways this is that. 'We are good for small business because we have extended it for a year.' Again I would urge the government to consider finding a final position on this and giving small business certainty moving forward. You know that we on this side of the House are in favour of that. I doubt that you would have any trouble at all convincing us that a permanent change to the accelerated depreciation rate is in order. We did it once. I have no doubt that the negotiation would be very fast and smooth and we could come to some kind of agreement, because in the long run it is good for business to have certainty over something as important as this.

There were a number of other changes that the government made back in 2014, like removing the $6,500 threshold, that were actually not good for small business. One of them was the abolition of the loss carry back. Labor had introduced it after consultation and advice from an incredible number of tax professionals. It allowed businesses that made a loss this year to draw on the tax that they had paid up to two years prior to cover that loss. Again, it was one of those incentivising tax rules which allow a business that has been making a profit to make a loss this year and then draw on it. So it incentivises investment, just like accelerated depreciation does. But the government abolished that one as well. On my side of the House, facing a government that claims to be pro small business and claims to be about incentives and investment, to see it doing something which was so negative was quite a surprise. Again, I urge the government to consider their position on that as well. It was an incredibly effective reform. It was genuine reform, at the time, and it was a great shame for many small businesses to see it go. There were many voices saying that at the time. There are fewer now because, I suspect, they do not see the government as serious on tax reform at all, except in this sugar-hit style that we are seeing today in the extension of an accelerated depreciation rate for one year only. It was important reform, and I urge the government to consider it.

I also urge the government to act on a few other things that there has been talk about recently. There was an incredibly important report on late payments from the small business ombudsman. Anyone who has run a small business, and I have, and anyone who talks to small businesses, knows that late payments are quite often the things that kill you. You can actually go out of business not because you are not viable—because you are viable—but because you do not get paid on time. In the music business, when I used to run the trade association, I used to make a not very funny joke that if every small business and large business got into a room on the same day and all handed over our money at the same time, it would clear up a whole stack of back payments. I had one situation where one company owed me $80,000 and I owed them $400. They could not net it out; I had to pay them the $400 before they paid me the $80,000. So there were people waiting for that payment, as well. I am absolutely familiar with what even a delay of a couple of weeks can do. It is an incredibly important report, and I would say that finding a solution to that—and this side of the House would be very willing—would be more valuable than whatever tax cuts and whatever accelerated depreciation you can give them. Solving that one, which actually allows businesses to be paid for the work they do relatively soon to the time they have to pay the costs of providing that service, would make an extraordinary difference.

I also urge the government to consider the impact of power costs and gas prices on business at the moment. We are hearing from some of the big businesses about how difficult life is becoming because of the size of their power bills. We have seen wholesale prices double since this government was elected—double since this government was elected. I had to say that twice, because that is an extraordinary change. We know what has happened to gas prices, and there are many, many big businesses already speaking loudly, but there are also many small businesses that are just suffering it, and trying to get through the next week and the next week after that, as their prices go up and up and up.

I also urge the government to heed the calls from small business to fix the NBN. I was out in a country town recently trying to buy a beautiful pottery tea set from an art gallery between here and the snow. It is not in the middle of nowhere; it is actually on the highway between here and the snow. He spent half an hour trying to take my money. In the end, he stood in the paddock with his credit-card reader trying to get a signal—walking around in the paddock trying to get a signal so he could take my money. If it had been in the city I would have said, 'Forget it; I'm not waiting half an hour.' I did have somewhere to go, but I felt so sorry for the guy I actually stayed there for half an hour trying to give the guy the opportunity to take my money. Businesses want customers that are willing to pay, and I was willing to pay. In this case, I could not pay, because the technology was not there. I suspect that businesses know better today than then. We are talking here about the simplest use of NBN, which is simply to take a payment. That is before you get to the possibilities of staff that live in different cities and still manage to work in a virtual office and before you get to the upload side of things. We really have to fix that, and I really urge the government to understand how seriously they damaged the capacity of business when they stuffed around with the NBN and went back to copper. It was a serious, serious step back in time.

Also, there is work on phoenixing. We all know that when companies phoenix—and many of them do it as a pattern, as repeat offenders—that it is small business that wears the cost. We all know someone who did the work and has no chance of being paid, and we all know businesses that have gone to the wall, not because they were not viable, but because there were people who were deliberately phoenixing in order to avoid payments. We have a government that does not seem prepared to act on that. The 'government of small business' does not seem prepared to act on that. There are many things still to do. Congratulations on this one, even though it is one year only, but there is much, much, much more to do.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour.