Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm afraid my question's pretty mundane. My question is to the Minister for Small and Family Business, the Work Place and Deregulation. Will the minister update the House on action the coalition government is taking to support businesses, including small and family businesses, so that they have the confidence they need to grow and employ more hardworking Australians? Is the minister aware of any alternative approaches?

Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party, Minister for Small and Family Business, the Workplace and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for McMillan for his question. It's only mundane on that side of the chamber. On this side of the chamber, the Treasurer was onto something. I'm the minister responsible for making small and family businesses bigger. My shadow, the shadow Treasurer, would be the minister responsible under Labor's plan for making small and family businesses smaller. He has never put his hand in his own pocket and run one; in fact the only way I think you would ever see the member for McMahon run a small business is if he got given a big one to start with.

I thank the member for McMillan for his question, and our plan is simple: 3.2 million small and family businesses are already seeing the benefits from our enterprise tax plan tax cuts. What's happening as a result? A record year of employment. What are businesses doing? What they've always done: reinvesting in themselves, growing and employing people—403,100; 75 per cent of them full-time.

It's not just our economic policies; there are employment policies that run hand in hand with this, such as the Youth Jobs PaTH, coming up to its first anniversary. Those opposite laugh, but the results are in: 63 per cent of the people that have participated in some aspect of PaTH in the past 12 months have received employment; nearly 70 per cent of the young people that have taken internships have found employment. I rang Cheryl this morning from Knowles panelbeating shop in the member for McMillan's electorate. We got the courtesies out of the way—she was very concerned that Stu was okay. Cheryl's run the business for 16 years—six employees. Her most recent is Shenille, an 18-year-old female who has started from a transition to PaTH program and is now employed as a spray painter in that business—an outstanding result.

This is an example of the plan across the board that is being implemented on this side of the House. What do we have opposite? We have a plan that is constructed by Sally McManus, repeated by the member for Gorton and then becomes Labor Party policy under the Leader of the Opposition. If they get elected onto the benches on this side, our economy would fall in a hole. The last year that they were actually in charge of the economy, jobs grew by 89,300 in total. The number of full-time jobs actually fell. We have a plan. We're implementing it. It's working. The results are in across the board, and we won't stop.