Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to rise today to support the motion put by Senator Fifield. But it is not a pleasure because of the issue itself.

What we have seen over the last month alone is a continuation of Labor's war on small business in this country. Today we had the finance minister, Senator Wong, here in question time answering questions from Senator Cormann and others about the cost of the carbon tax on small business. But Senator Wong constantly referred to who might allegedly pay the actual carbon tax bill—the sophistry of this government that says that just because it is only limited to a certain number of payers, the costs of the carbon tax might not being borne by the millions of Australian small businesses.

Senator Wong also talked about how there are compensation arrangements: apparently there should only be a less than one per cent impact on the cost to small businesses. Yet we know now that the reality is very different. We are all hearing stories from around the country about the impact of the cost of this carbon tax on small business; the impact of costs that they cannot necessarily pass on. That is saving consumers some of the costs, at least in the short term; but in the long term we know that if you build up the costs of doing business and if you build up the costs of business inputs that those costs will be passed onto the consumer. But it is small business at the moment that is bearing the crunch.

Senator Wong was talking today, with all the sophistry of this government, about who is actually paying the tax and the alleged Treasury modelling that shows there will only be a less than one per cent impact by the carbon tax on small business. She sounded like Sir Humphrey Appleby in Yes Minister, who famously asked his prime minister: 'Very well, Prime Minister. It all works very well in practice but does it work in theory?' The problem we have with this government is that it is relying on the way it wishes the world was rather than the way the world actually is.

They may have modelling that talks about the alleged savings to business; they may have modelling that talks about alleged costs to small business—but reality is interfering with that. This Labor Party has never known how important small business is to our economy in providing local jobs and services and it has never understood how important small businesses are to our communities.

As I have said before, when we go around our nation to the suburbs of our major cities and the regional towns, what we find is that our community leaders are often our small business people. When we look at who runs the Rotary and Apex clubs, who is sponsoring the local football or netball club, or who might be the captain of the local CFA or rural fire brigade, what we notice is that overwhelmingly our community leaders are our small business leaders. They are the fabric of our community as much as they are the fabric of our economy. What this government is doing to them through this carbon tax is yet another example of the assault on small business. Why is that? Because the Labor Party not only does not understand small business; it has never been interested in it. Despite all the verbiage and sophistry we hear, they do not understand what makes someone get out of bed in the morning, put their house on the line and take the risk of employing someone and expanding that business; what makes someone not see their family and do the paperwork, which this government in particular imposes, at home at the kitchen table. They do not understand what drives people to do that.

Why is that? It is the same reason we do not see a great deal of unionisation in the small business workplace. Whether it is independent contractors or the classic small business owner, they are not recruited into the union movement. They hold no interest for the ALP. I wonder whether there is anyone in the once-great Australian Labor Party that went into politics saying, 'I want to be Minister for Small Business.' I cannot imagine anyone on that side doing that. The job has been thrown around to four people in the last five years. The job of Minister for Small Business has been the leftover job that this Labor Party has thrown as a bone to someone else to fill part of another portfolio or just to keep someone busy. It is not something that someone has put their hand up for and said, 'This is the job I want.' On this side of the chamber it is what motivated so many people, whether from our regional centres, our rural businesses or our great cities, to go into business.

We have over 2½ million small business people in this country. Let us look at the record of this government when it comes to them—the record that this carbon tax is making worse. When the Howard government left office, the ABS estimated that just over 5 million people—5,061,000 people— were employed in small business around Australia. That was more than half of the private sector workforce or just over 51.3 per cent. Today, after nearly 5 years of the Labor Party, it is down to 47 per cent of the private sector economy. When I say that that is an important trend, it is because of what I mentioned earlier. It is an important trend because the small business people in our communities are our community leaders as much as they are our economic leaders.

Since Labor was elected in 2007 we are looking at more than a quarter of a million jobs gone in the small business sector. We know that over the last three or four years a substantial number of jobs created in this country have been public sector jobs. Public sector jobs are important but all public sector jobs, including ours in this very chamber, ride on the back of the private sector economy in this country. The private sector economy rides on the back of small business that once employed more than half the people in this country and now employs just under half.

Small business is the heart of innovation. It is the heart of our communities. It is often the place where someone gets their first job and their start in the labour market. I pushed trolleys around a suburban supermarket and worked in the freezer. How many people have started in their local milk bar, franchise, fast food restaurant or supermarket? That is one of the reasons that small businesses are important. Operating costs are at a 10-year high under this government and they are constantly going up. Despite the smart words and the spin from the smart politicians opposite, they will not concede the obvious: when you make the cost of energy and the cost of doing business more expensive through the carbon tax, you are only driving those costs higher. The number of small businesses that have gone bankrupt in the last 12 months has gone up by 48 per cent.

This government crows about the economy. It talks about how we are the envy of the world. It sits here in Canberra reading the latest statistics—