Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister advise the House how the government is standing with Australian family businesses to keep our economy strong?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. Earlier today I was talking to Gavin Scurr. Gavin Scurr runs a strawberry farm up in Caboolture, which would be known to the member for Longman. We spoke today about the terrible impact happening not just to his business but to about 120 other growers up there in Queensland in particular. They've seen demand for strawberries drop by 50 per cent. Our actions today include working with other agencies, state governments and others; the million dollars we put in to support quality standards and support the industry; and, on top of that, the additional penalties to ensure that we can prevent any further idiotic behaviour by people going in and tampering with the fruit that children eat in this country.

The reason we've done this is that we want to protect Australian families and also that we are never slow to act to support Australian family businesses, like Gavin Scurr's. There are many other issues we have to deal with when it comes to this. The Speaker would be very well aware of this issue, having strawberry farmers in his own electorate. Mr Speaker, you would be aware of that. There are the issues that remain of ensuring that we protect the fields themselves. We know that if they can't pick the strawberries, as Gavin was reminding me today, then those entire fields are at risk of being walked away from.

I'm hopeful and looking forward to the further initiatives that the state government will take in that area. We're happy to work with them to the extent that those responsibilities fall to the Commonwealth government, but we're very pleased to work, whether it's with the Queensland government or any other government, to protect our farmers—in this case, we're talking about our strawberry farmers—to ensure that their businesses can return to as normal as possible as soon as possible. It is about cutting them up, not cutting them out. It is returning to your normal consumption of strawberries and taking sensible precautions.

That's not the only thing we're doing to support small and family businesses around this country as a government. We've been doing it for five years. That support has meant lower taxes, which the Labor Party will increase. It is their stated and published policy that they will increase the legislated tax reductions that we have taken through this parliament from 25 per cent up to 27½ per cent. That's what they will do. That's their policy. If you run a small or medium business, or if you're one of the seven million Australians who work in one of those businesses with a turnover of under $50 million, you are going to be working in a business that will be paying higher taxes if Labor is elected at the next election. I've never understood how Labor thinks that if a taxpayer, or particularly a business, has to pay more tax to the government they can invest more in their business, invest more in their employees or invest more in the business that they've put their whole livelihoods into. The instant asset write-off, the simplification of the BAS and the extension of the definition of a small business from $2 million to $10 million—that's what we've done. We're going to keep doing it.