Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Mason, just like OneSteel it has plummeted. It was trading at $2.20 on 23 February 2011, but today it is trading at 74c. That is what you get when the majority of senators in this place on the government side are former trade unionists. That is what you get when the absolute closest that the people in the current government have ever come to a business is to ensure that that businesses is closed down. This is a government that just does not understand the reality of business. In particular, they do not understand the reality of small business and the fact that an announcement like the carbon tax—the pushing through of legislation that is going to increase the price of electricity, wages and almost everything that a small business touches—has an effect on a small business's bottom line.

Those of us on this side of the chamber know that the margins in small business are very small. If you move those margins, what you effectively do to that business is shut it down. Despite the fact that we are standing here tonight debating the Steel Transformation Plan Bill, none of those thousands of businesses—the thousands of steel fabricators all over Australia, many of them longstanding businesses operated by the mums and dads of Australia—will actually qualify for any compensation under this bill. What that says to those business owners is that they will have a decision to make, and the decision, as we know—because it has already been made by so many small businesses in Australia—is not going to be a very nice one. The decision will ultimately be to close their doors. And when they close their doors we all know what happens. They lay off employees—it is as simple as that. They lay off employees, and the mums and dads of Australia, who are already battling under the higher cost of living, will not have jobs and they will have no income.

That can all be put down to the Australian Labor Party, who promised the people of Australia prior to the 2010 election that they would not do this to them. They went to the election saying to the people of Australia, 'We will not impose a carbon tax on you.' And what that meant was: 'We will not impose a policy that is going to increase your electricity costs. We will not impose a policy that is going to directly increase your costs of living. We will not impose a policy that is going to see businesses in this country go offshore. We will not impose a policy that, in pushing businesses offshore, is going to see the closure of businesses in Australia and the loss of jobs by so many mums and dads across the many states of Australia.' But that is exactly what the Australian Labor Party did. Given the Labor government's betrayal of the people of Australia, it is patently true that Labor's continual claim that it alone is the party that looks after the workers is just more dishonest Labor rhetoric.