Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

My colleague Senator Carr well covered the reasons why the government have opposed this amendment. There are just two elements that I want to respond to. The first is the question of why we need a clearing house specifically for small business, whoever provides it. Why do we need it? We need it because, as a consequence of superannuation choice provisions as introduced by the previous government, there has been an enormous new red-tape and regulatory burden placed on small business. We warned the previous government at the time they introduced superannuation choice about some of the difficulties that would confront business, particularly small business. Choice of fund requires in law that a business provides a choice-of-fund form to all new employees. It then legally requires the processing of those forms by that business where there is a departure from the default fund. There is an administrative cost to that. And then obviously there is the payment.

A lot of small businesses, as I am sure Senator Joyce knows, do not have electronic transfer payment facilities in order to carry this out; they do it manually. So this is an additional problem for small business. One of the features of Medicare, of course, is that they have physical offices to which businesses can go to make manual payments. That is not available through a traditional electronic clearing house. I know some of these privately run electronic clearing houses, and they do not have physical offices on the ground—particularly in regional Australia, Senator Joyce—by which small businesses can continue, if they wish, to make manual payments. In the case of Devonport, where I live, there is a Medicare office for small business and people can, obviously, physically walk in. Our preference is electronic payment but the reality is that many small businesses will continue for the foreseeable future to do this work physically rather than electronically. That is one important advantage.

The other issues have been well canvassed in this debate and Senator Carr has run through those. This issue has been the major point of contention during the second reading debate—not the only point raised but the major focus of debate—and I commend the government’s position on Medicare to the Senate chamber. The government opposes the opposition amendment.