Sam Lim (Tangney, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Small Business. How will Australia's hardworking small businesses benefit from the Albanese Labor government's targeted support?

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do want to thank the member for Tangney for that important question. I know that he understands just how important and crucial small businesses are not just to the national economy but, importantly, to local communities. And not only do small businesses put pay cheques in pockets; they are now employing more than 5.2 million Australians and contributing more than half a trillion dollars each and every year to the Australian economy.

It was great to be with the member for Tangney in his electorate just over a week ago, hosting a roundtable of small businesses, where the small businesses were telling us about issues that concern them, and they were really interested to hear about the government's measures that will support them, because they understand that we on this side of the parliament are the party that backs small business. We're standing up for fairness and we're delivering to help small businesses. Today in the House—

Opposition members interjecting —

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! There is far too much noise on my left. I'm now issuing a general warning.

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the House today, we've introduced new measures to provide support for small businesses. We've introduced the Small Business Energy Incentive, which will help up to 3.8 million small businesses with the clean energy transition and to save on their energy bills. It will help pay for upgrades for more efficient heating and cooling systems, for installing batteries and switching to energy-saving electrical goods such as efficient fridges.

The incentive is estimated to provide $310 million in targeted relief and will assist small businesses in laying the foundations for their future growth. This is on top of the targeted energy bill relief that we have already provided for around one million small businesses—$650 that will be coming directly off their energy bills—in partnership with the states and territories. I needn't remind those opposite that they voted against that support for small businesses. We've also introduced today the $20,000 instant asset write-off, to make it easier for small businesses to invest and to grow. This is estimated to provide around $290 million in targeted support.

They build on the actions that we have already taken to support small businesses: the $15 million for free mental health and financial counselling support, access to the Commonwealth procurement rules and updating those to make sure small businesses can access more of the $80 billion in government contracts that we provide each and every year. We have passed legislation to make unfair contract terms illegal, and I thank the assistant minister for that. We've committed to ensuring small businesses are paid on time, with a recent review of payment times for small businesses, to make sure that they're not carrying the load and the balance sheets of big businesses.

The Albanese government knows that small businesses are vital to the Australian economy. We'll keep working for Australian small businesses and provide them with the targeted support that they need.