Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Primary Industries, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I must admit that I do not understand how the advisers could interpret those amendments in the way that they have, because all we do is replace the words ‘small business’ with the words ‘eligible business’ wherever they occur. We do not take anything out and we do not qualify the matter. In the definition we change ‘small business’ to ‘eligible business’ and that is all. I do not understand how it could have the purported effect the minister suggests.

We have not in any sense suggested that we would not support the provisions. We thought that in some areas it would, frankly, render a significantly sized applicant subject to perhaps negative comment or even derision when it claimed to be a ‘small business’. But we are not going to stand in the way of assistance for those businesses. That is what I tried to make clear when I put the initial proposition. We think this is good policy. We do not want to exclude businesses because they have 21, 25 or 33 employees. We suspect that there will not be too many with anything like 99 employees, but were they in circumstances to apply we think that if it were to be known in their communities that they were applying as a ‘small business’ the community would be amused. They would not consider them to be a small business.

That is all we were trying to do. We will be voting for these amendments, but if they fail we will be voting for the legislation because we do not want to stand in the way of this provision. But we do think it is not too much to ask the government to accept those amendments. They would not have anything like the effect the minister suggests they would have.

Question negatived.

Bill agreed to.

Bill reported without amendment; report adopted.