Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia's millions of small businesses are the engine room of our nation's economy. They're at the heart of local communities across the country and employ millions of Australians. Small businesses employ more than five million people and contribute more than $500 billion to our nation's economy every year. That's why we are delivering for small business, helping them to bounce back from the challenges and improve their long-term resilience.

Our most recent budget is helping to ease the pressure on Australia's 2.5 million small businesses by providing more than $640 million in practical and targeted support. Our support also focuses on saving small businesses time and money, reducing administrative burdens and making it easier for small businesses to comply with their obligations. We're giving small businesses a tax cut through the $20,000 instant asset write-off, and we're extending this for a further year, until June 2025, to provide small businesses with the confidence and certainty to invest. This is equivalent to an estimated $290 million of support each year for two years.

We are abolishing 457 nuisance tariffs that existed under those opposite in the largest unilateral tariff reform in two decades. This will cut compliance costs for small business. We've updated the Commonwealth Procurement Rules, and small businesses are getting a big slice of the $70 billion in contracts the Australian government spends every year, with a 25 per cent target. We're providing $25.3 million over four years to improve payment times for small businesses, helping improve cash flow and boosting productivity, because I hear from small businesses that government and large businesses are choking them by being slow payers. We have announced a $23.3 million investment to help small businesses adopt e-invoicing, reducing invoice scams and improving cash flow, as part of broader support measures outlined in the recent small-business statement.

We're providing $20 million in extra support for small-business innovation, up to 750 small and medium businesses will have access to extra support to help them turn great Australian ideas into thriving new businesses. We're delivering training opportunities for small businesses. The Albanese Labor government is committing to supporting small businesses, with new tailored training opportunities now available to help businesses with tax and super, and the first round of grants from the $392 million Industry Growth Program, supporting small and medium businesses in sectors like battery manufacturing and agriculture, have been distributed. We're protecting small businesses and consumers by outlawing unfair contract terms to help level the playing field in negotiations between big corporations and both small businesses and consumers. And we're responding to the review of the Franchising Code of Conduct with a range of new initiatives, making franchising fairer for small businesses operating in the sector.

Our government is investing more than $60 million to help small businesses uplift their cybersecurity and digital capabilities, and, as part of this, $7.2 million will go to establishing a voluntary cyber health check program, which will allow businesses to undertake a free, tailored self-assessment of their cybersecurity maturity. This government is providing funding to the Fair Work Commission to support the uptake of enterprise bargaining for small businesses and ongoing funding for the Fair Work Ombudsman's Employer Advisory Service to assist small-business employers to meet their obligations. We're providing $3.5 billion of energy bill relief to households and small businesses through the Energy Bill Relief Fund, which will deliver rebates of $325 to around one million small businesses. And we've just had round 2 of the Energy Efficiency Grants for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises program. This program has delivered $62 million which enabled small businesses to upgrade electrical equipment such as refrigeration, coldrooms and the like or to invest in panels and batteries to bring their energy bills down.

Small businesses can continue to count on the Albanese Labor government to back them every step of the way with practical and targeted support.

House adjourned at 20:00