Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There were 249,179 small businesses across regional Australia as at 30 June 2023. That is a big number—a quarter of a million small businesses—and that's just in New South Wales. We know that right across the country small business absolutely dominates the economic landscape, because it is in small businesses where they employ most of the private sector. Most of the people paying tax receipts are employed by small businesses. Small-business owners and operators, we have to applaud them. We have to thank them because they are the ones who pay their workers first and who often go without. They go without pay in many instances. They go without holidays. They make sure that the lifeblood of the Australian economy endures.

I have to say that across my Riverina electorate—and all politics is local—the Riverina small businesses absolutely dominate. Indeed, they contribute these gross domestic products. It's $739 million by Bland Shire, centred on West Wyalong. Take the figure for Coolamon; it's a quarter of a billion dollars. In the Cootamundra and Gundagai region it's $833 million. In Junee it's $464 million. There's $234 million contributed by Lockhart, and so on and so forth. In Temora it's $549 million. Then we come to Wagga Wagga and it's $6.8 billion. They are big figures. Indeed, what we should be doing is enhancing small business, not hampering it.

I have to say that the Labor government has constricted and constrained small business by its policies, by making sure that, for instance, the instant asset tax write-off is limited. I know this was increased ever so slightly in the last budget, but it was far higher under a coalition government. What small businesses were able to do, if they were, say, a tradie, farmer or small-business operator who required a vehicle, was go and write off the entire cost of that vehicle. But when it came back to $20,000 under Labor those provisions weren't possible because you can't purchase too much of a car for $20,000 unless it's one of those clapped-out clunkers. We all remember the clunker policy that Labor introduced in 2010, but we won't go there.

We know that small business should be preserved and protected, but, unfortunately, Labor does not. What they have done with their industrial relations policy and high-taxing regime is put every roadblock in the way of small businesses. No-one feels this more than those in regional Australia, and no-one feels it more in regional Australia than our farmers, who grow our food and fibre. You only have to look at last year's budget to see the largest amount of money for agriculture, for that vital sector, was $107 million for shutting down the live sheep trade. So there's Labor. They're paying more than $100 million to shut down a sector of small-business owners and operators who will be here, out the front, tomorrow. And I welcome those Labor members, particularly those West Australian Labor members, if they're not prepared to address the rally, to go and at least listen to the rally. If they care about their constituency and if they care about small businesses, listen to what those small-business owners and operators, particularly the Keep the Sheep farmers, have to say about Labor Party policies.

Of the 2½ million small businesses in Australia, 60 per cent were in greater capital city areas and 31 per cent were in regional areas. I have to say that I'm proud of the third, or thereabouts, of those in regional areas. I'm proud of all small businesses. As a former small business minister, I'm proud of what they do. I would say to those small-business owners and operators to look at the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman's website, ASBFEO. It is a website well worth going to because, no matter who's in government, there's something there for those small-business owners and operators to help them get through the myriad of tax reform and legislation as far as IR is concerned.

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Riverina and I can agree on that point at least. There is a lot of support out there for small businesses, no matter who's in government. The department gets on with the job, the website exists, and there's a lot of advice available for small businesses. The fact is that in developing this private member's motion, the member for Casey went to great lengths to specify the precise number of insolvent businesses this year in various states across the country, but he failed to mention two very important points: one, what these figures mean as a percentage of total small businesses in each state; and (2) the policies behind those figures. The member for Casey conveniently ignored these points because he knows that the proportion of insolvencies out of the total number of small businesses is below the long-term historical average under the Albanese Labor government. Let me repeat that. Under the Albanese Labor government, the proportion of insolvencies out of the total number of small businesses is below the long-term historical average. I will leave it to those listening to speculate as to why the member for Casey would ignore two such important points.

According to the deputy Liberal leader, energy prices are pushing businesses into insolvency. We hear this from the member for Lindsay incessantly. Both members voted against energy bill relief. Apparently, energy hardship is hitting small businesses harder than COVID-19, according to the deputy Liberal leader. It was the deputy Liberal leader, in the same breath, who said that only the opposition leader has a plan to get Australia back on track. What is that grand plan? It's not caps on fuel costs. The opposition leader has a 100 per cent voting record against them. And it's not rebates on energy bills. We know that the opposition leader and deputy Liberal leader, and, in fact, every member of the coalition, voted no to energy bill belief. The opposition leader's grand plan to get the country back on track is hiking energy bills with nuclear power stations.

The CSIRO and every credible economist agree that nuclear power will take too long to deliver in Australia and will hike up energy bill prices if it ever gets off the ground. Power bills will go up under nuclear power; in fact, your power bill will go nuclear. It will cost double that of renewables. Renewables are taking off now. They're affordable. They are the choice of the market. Yet, the opposition leader is on this fantasy of nuclear power. Don't misunderstand me. I know and accept that small-business people are doing it tough right now, but the Albanese Labor government works alongside them to get the relief they need while the Liberal Party simply pushes them under. From 1 July this year, the Albanese Labor government eased energy hardship by delivering $325 of energy bill relief to nearly one million businesses nationwide—bill relief that the Liberal Party and the National Party, including the member for Casey, voted against.

Our government is extending $20,000 instant asset write-off. A small business—one that earns under $10 million—will be able to immediately deduct eligible assets costing less than $20,000 until June next year. This is expected to save small businesses around $290 million. The instant asset write-off was a Labor initiative. When Tony Abbott became Prime Minister, he axed it. Then the Liberals brought it back. I'm pleased to say the instant asset write-off has bipartisan support from both Labor and the coalition, but we simply cannot accept when they say that Labor does not support it.

I go to this quote about this instant asset write-off scheme:

It allows businesses to invest in productivity. It allows them to invest in machinery that increases their performance which keeps prices down for consumers, and it allows them to continue to grow.

It's a great quote. If you want any evidence of what a great quote it is, just ask the member for Casey. It's his quote. Here he is with a private member's motion before the House talking about the Labor government's approach to small business, and here he is quoted saying he supports our plan for instant asset write-off.

There are nearly 2.5 million small businesses across Australia, and they employ nearly five million Australians. The Albanese Labor government supports every single one of them. (Time expired)

Cameron Caldwell (Fadden, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today we face a critical debate on a pressing issue that affects us all: the state of Australian small business. I rise today to emphasise the urgent need for acknowledgement and action on the motion that's been proposed by the member for Casey, which highlights the dire situation small businesses are grappling with. Small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy, and in Fadden we know this all too well. Our local businesses, whether the corner cafe that serves as a gathering place for our community, the family-owned store that's been a staple for generations or the small, vibrant boutique that adds character to our streets, are all crucial to our economy and to our way of life. Yet under the Albanese Labor government they are now at a breaking point, struggling under the weight of policies and red tape that seem to disregard the contribution that these businesses make to our communities.

Recent data paints a troubling picture. In the last financial year alone, Australia has seen an unprecedented number of business insolvencies. In Queensland alone, 2,036 businesses have succumbed to financial ruin. This is not just a statistic; it's a reflection of countless individual dreams and livelihoods that have been shattered. The Albanese Labor government has overseen the highest number of business failures on record, surpassing even the troubling figures from 2011 and 2012. This is a record that didn't need to be broken.

It's not a reflection of the resilience of the Australian small businesses; let's not forget they recently weathered the storm of a once-in-a-century pandemic with grit and determination, showing their ability to adapt and overcome adversity. During that pandemic, we saw a strong coalition government that supported businesses through what was an extremely difficult time. But fast forward to today and Labor have once again shown their true colours, with small businesses being left out to dry, struggling to survive under the weight of higher energy bills, complex and impractical industrial relations laws and spiralling inflation.

In my electorate on the Gold Coast, we have witnessed firsthand the impact of these policy failures. Local businesses are closing their doors, and with them go the vibrancy and character that define our community. Sadly, many of our favourite local businesses have closed. It's clear that the current government's approach is not working. Small business are asking for support, for understanding and for policies that truly address their needs. We need a government that not only acknowledges the problem but acts decisively to deliver on it.

Our small businesses deserve better. They deserve better support, better policies and better government that prioritises their survival and their growth. Today's motion is a call to recognise the struggles of our small businesses and to demand a change. I recently spoke to a local businessman and said to him, 'What is it that's causing this problem at the moment that all of these small businesses are suffering?' He said it was like wave after wave of pressure that was coming. It's the power prices. It's the industrial relations laws. It's the higher prices they have to pay to their suppliers.

We've recently heard of the increased risk to doing businesses, business to business, because other businesses are suffering and struggling to pay suppliers' bills. This puts an enormous amount of pressure on many small businesses. Time for payments is blowing out. Payments are just not being made at all. These are the risks that people in small businesses take on. They take them on for the reward of running their own business and having their own timetable, but they shouldn't have to suffer at the hands of this Labor government's approach to how to kill a small business.

For the sake of small and family businesses across our nation, I urge the government to offer the support to our small businesses that they so desperately need.

Jerome Laxale (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I became a member of this place, I ran a small, family owned business: the one my father started in 1987 out of the back of a van. He worked hard to build it up. It paid for my education and my upbringing and it has employed scores of people over the years. My entire life has been one living in and around a small business. I get small business owners and I get small business. I know the sacrifices they make and the reward that sacrifice can bring. Small-business people are my people, and I'm their person in this government. I know the challenges small businesses face and I know how important they are to our local communities.

Small businesses employ locals. They give our town centres vibrancy and they help grow our local and national economy. I'm constantly meeting with small businesses across Bennelong, listening to their stories of innovation, hard work and resilience. Connecting with local businesses is something I've been doing for quite some time. As a councillor, then mayor, through the good times and bad, I've been working with and alongside businesses and business chambers in Bennelong. I helped support them during COVID when I was mayor; I worked with them to make our town centres more vibrant, with more events and infrastructure; and I engaged with them nearly every day in my new role as their federal MP. I'm close to local small business and I know that small businesses are doing it tough.

The post-COVID boom is over, inflation is stubbornly high and interest rates are biting. But we are a government that's offering help. Our government's policies are targeted and designed to improve the long-term resilience of small businesses. This year's budget provides more than $640 million in practical and targeted support for small businesses. The Small Business Debt Helpline is a free, government supported phone line with experienced small-business financial counsellors who can provide advice at a difficult time. Our government is also finding an expansion of the National Tax Clinic program, with an additional five clinics across the country to provide small businesses and individuals with better tax advice and help. Small businesses can also access the tax concierge service through the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, funded to provide support where there may be disputes.

Further, $62.6 million was delivered by this government in energy efficiency grants to eligible small and medium businesses to help them save money on their energy bills and help them lower their emissions. There was also $18.6 million delivered to help small businesses adapt and build resilience through digital technology. There was a 20 per cent bonus tax deduction for employers who incurred costs to train and upskill their employees and a 20 per cent bonus tax deduction for small businesses that wanted to invest in technology and digital operations.

We've changed the rules to make it easier for small businesses to have more access to Commonwealth procurement and for small businesses to be paid on time, and we've delivered energy relief to one million eligible small businesses across the country. We've had to. Small businesses collectively employ more than five million Australians and contribute more than $500 billion to our nation's economy every year. Our job in government—every government's job—is to back our 2½ million small businesses to ensure that they have the confidence and certainty going forward.

We know that the number of corporate insolvencies has risen recently, and this is a concern for us all. With the unwinding of COVID-era relief, the number of corporate insolvencies is exceeding previous peaks. But, despite that recent increase, ASIC data indicates that, as a proportion of total companies, the level of corporate insolvencies was 0.33 per cent in 2023-24, which is lower than the long-term historical average of 0.42 per cent.

This government will continue to work alongside small businesses to monitor the economy and developments in this space and to provide support to small businesses as they navigate through these difficult times. Small businesses can have confidence that our government is committed to supporting them. As I said, I understand the challenges they face. I've grown up in a small business my entire life. I'm part of a government that is taking action to support them. We're providing practical support, targeted investment and sustainable policy to ensure that small businesses remain a major part of our economic growth, and that they transition from small businesses to bigger ones.

Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want Australia to be the best place in the world to start and grow a business. And we can be, but currently we're not. If we are going to realise this opportunity, we must listen to the businesses we already have in this country and really understand what they need in order to do better.

If you talk to businesses, as I have recently in Wentworth, they talk about what makes them successful. We've got a lot of great businesses that are doing well. They say, 'Look, to even survive or to thrive I need to focus on my customers, I need to focus on my suppliers and I need to work with my team.' What they say to me constantly is, 'Government needs to get out of the way or make it easy for me to do my job.' That's really what this parliament needs to do much, much better on because, frankly, businesses are having a hard time right now. Small businesses are having a disproportionately hard time right now, and we in this parliament are not doing enough to support them.

We can see that in the data. We see that the number of insolvencies in Australia is higher than ever before. Of those that survived, we still see that almost half of small businesses are considering closing in the next 12 months. But we also see that in who is going into business. We see that small businesses are now only 30 per cent of the economy, when back in 2006 they were 40 per cent of the economy. We see that the proportion of young people under 30 operating a small or family business has halved since 1976. Fewer people are seeing small businesses as a pathway for their careers. This is really tragic. It's tragic at a personal level for people, but it is also a problem at an economy level. The e61 Institute has shown that productivity, an issue that we have in this country, is driven by new and emerging businesses—young, dynamic firms. But, if young people aren't starting these firms and aren't going into business, we won't have those drivers of productivity which help the entire economy. We need to be fostering these businesses.

There are four things that I think we as a parliament need to fight for. These are the four things that I'm fighting for for small and medium businesses. Firstly, we need better access to business finance to build the innovative businesses of tomorrow and to back our Australian businesses. Australia has a chronic investment shortfall for young firms despite having one of the largest pension schemes in the world. In the last decade the proportion of private equity investment and superannuation funds has halved from 60 per cent to 30 per cent. This will be made worse if self-managed super funds are taxed on unrealised gains. But it's not just high-growth tech firms that are struggling. It's also about young people with a great business idea but without their own home to offer as collateral, who are struggling. When banks tell me that business lending is red-hot right now, the data tells a different story. It shows that business lending is going to the bigger businesses. It is not going to the small and medium businesses that it needs to go to.

Secondly, the award system has become far too complex and needs urgent streamlining. Most businesses are not maliciously underpaying workers in the small and medium businesses I talk to, but, frankly, they are struggling with the complexity of the award system. My niece came to me and asked if she was being paid right as a cafe worker. It took me 20 minutes, and I've employed a lot of people in my time. We need to have a simplified award system, and this government could be the government to lead on this. We need to take further steps to make it easy for people to employ people, and make it easy for employers and employees to know if their pay is right.

Thirdly, the government needs to be an ally of small businesses, and that means not being an enemy. It means really looking at the regulatory settings to ensure that they're proportional and appropriate for small businesses. Government could also better use its own procurement practices to make sure that it doesn't procure from big businesses who aren't paying small business on time, as well as opening up more procurement to small businesses who are trying to get a leg into government procurement, though it's a very complex system.

Lastly, we need to simplify and improve the tax system for small businesses. We need permanent tax supports in place that incentivise small businesses to invest and grow, rather than this annual politicking that we see each year around instant asset write-offs. We also need to harmonise or remove payroll tax. It hits business twice—both as a financial tax on each additional worker and as an administrative tax—due to the discrepancy across the different jurisdictions.

The challenges of small business aren't new, but they are growing, and we in this parliament need to step up. The major parties are timid on these issues, whether it be tax or fundamentally making awards work for businesses and for employees. They need to step up on these key issues, and I will continue to push them.

Tracey Roberts (Pearce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to address the critical issue of small businesses in Australia and the Albanese Labor government's unwavering commitment to their success. While we acknowledge the challenges faced by our small businesses, particularly in the wake of COVID-19, I must emphasise the remarkable resilience and entrepreneurial spirit that has emerged in these trying times.

To competently address the allegations made by the member for Casey, we must put the current situation into perspective. The Commonwealth Bank's recent research reveals an inspiring trend: since the pandemic began, one in three Australians has started or plans to start a small business. This entrepreneurial surge has been nothing short of remarkable, with new business entities increasing by 20 per cent in the 2022 financial year alone. When we consider insolvencies as a proportion of the overall number of businesses, which is growing significantly, they are not at historical heights. In fact, they are not even back to pre-pandemic levels.

I want to highlight the Albanese Labor government's comprehensive approach to supporting small businesses by demonstrating how this year's budget reflects our dedication, providing more than $640 million in practical and targeted support for small businesses. We have extended the $20,000 instant asset write-off until 30 June 2025, providing $290 million in tax relief to help business invest and grow. We are delivering a $325 energy bill relief rebate for eligible small businesses, as part of a $3.5 billion energy bill relief package. We are providing financial counselling and mental health support by committing $10.8 million to extend the Small Business Debt Helpline and the NewAccess for Small Business Owners program. We are investing $25.3 million to strengthen the Payment Times Reporting Scheme, ensuring fair and timely payments to small businesses. We are providing $2.6 million in dispute resolution support to the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman to help resolve disputes. We are investing $34.5 million in cybersecurity initiatives, with programs like Cyber Wardens and the Small Business Cyber Resilience Service. We are funding 20,000 additional fee-free TAFE and VET places, focusing on skills and education in industries where small businesses are prevalent. We are expanding the National Tax Clinic Program, with five additional tax support clinics across the country, offering expert tax advice to small businesses. We are also allocating $3 million to implementing Franchising Code of Conduct reforms, improving protections for franchisees. These measures demonstrate the Albanese Labor government's ongoing commitment to the 2.5 million small businesses that collectively employ more than five million Australians and contribute over $500 million to our nation's economy every year.

The Albanese Labor government understands that small businesses are the engine room of our economy. We are not just helping them survive; we are positioning them to thrive in a post-pandemic world. Our policies are targeted at improving their long-term resilience and providing practical support for those facing challenges. The entrepreneurial boom we have witnessed is a testament to the Australian spirit. It is our job to nurture this spirit and provide the right environment for it to flourish. That is exactly what we are doing with our comprehensive support package. But the recovery isn't easy. The government is here to support small business every step of the way. We will help them adapt, innovate and succeed. Our commitment to this sector remains unwavering and we are confident that with the right support and policies Australian small business will continue to be the backbone of our economy for many, many years to come. The future of Australian small businesses is bright under the Albanese Labor government, which is dedicated to ensuring they have every opportunity to reach their full potential.

Debate adjourned.