Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the. Will the minister update the House on how the government's tax cuts for small and medium businesses are benefitting the economy? And what are the risks to the business sector posed by different ideas?

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 Canning for his question and note that recently we were touring his electorate, talking to small and medium-sized family enterprises that, as the Treasurer mentioned earlier, as of next week will enjoy further tax cuts.

In a spirit of bipartisanship, I congratulate the member for McMahon, the shadow Treasurer, for being made full time the shadow minister for small and family business, especially given his strong history and association with them. I do note, though, that I am pleased—and many people make reference to the book that he has written—that, in good news, I don't suspect we'll have a book on how you run a small and family business, because the member for McMahon could write what he knows about that on the back of a postage stamp. That said, in his defence, the Leader of the Opposition could write what he knows on the top of a pinhead.

In Western Australia there is a building company called Daly & Shaw. They employ 40 full-time employees and 250 subcontractors. They turn over $40 million. Their profit margin, net, is around two per cent. That's the part that gets missed by the Leader of the Opposition. Big-turnover businesses do not necessarily mean big-profit businesses, yet they employ big numbers of people. The 250 subcontractors whose profitability—it's not just the 40 full-time people here. Yes, their employment resides on the profitability of this business, but the 250 subcontractors also do. And what do they do? They spend back in the local economy.

In the last 4½ years under the Turnbull coalition government, there has been a net increase of 40,868 small and family businesses in construction. In Labor's last years, there was a decrease in the number of businesses operating in construction of 2,232. Those 40,868 construction businesses account for 200,000 jobs, 20 per cent of the one million created in the last 4½ years.

For the Leader of the Opposition, the shadow Treasurer and their reckless plan to attack business, irrespective of size, there is one sure-fire result: they won't just hit the businesses in question. If you attack small and medium and family businesses, you are also attacking their employees. That is the part they miss. They've never done it. They don't know what it looks like, yet they want to offer themselves up as an alternative with their economic plan. I say: not now, not ever.