John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Getting back to small business: the biggest thing that is lacking is confidence. You talk to anyone. I went for a walk in my home town a couple of weeks ago, down the street talking to small businesses. The thing that is lacking is confidence. And why is confidence lacking? Why aren't people spending? Because they do not trust the government. They do not trust them when they have broken promises on adding costs to small business, on bringing in new taxes—and there is a list of new taxes. They do not trust the government on managing money. I had a look at the Australian Office of Financial Management website on Friday: the debt is now $241 billion—it has grown $3 billion in just two weeks! Fourteen days and we have borrowed $3 billion. Now, who is going to pay for that?

As we know, and as Senator Ryan said, the nation's wealth is derived through the business sector. Governments do not have money; they have sold off all the assets—now governments, sadly, just have debt. So that is where the nation's wealth is derived from: the business sector. And who is the greatest employer? The small-business sector. But this government is hell-bent on destroying small business, adding more costs to them. I will quote from the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry survey. Mr Greg Evans, Director of Economics and Industry Policy of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, commented:

The Survey clearly shows that trading conditions remain challenging for Australian businesses in non-mining related sectors, with small businesses reporting the worst performance.

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It is alarming that important small business growth indicators, including sales revenue, selling prices, profit growth and investment in plant and equipment, are approaching their historical low levels previously recorded during the height of the global financial crisis

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Small businesses are concerned that while their selling prices have fallen to record low levels, their input costs remained elevated. While growth in labour costs has slowed in recent quarters, these costs remained at high levels and have resulted in a further fall in small business employment … small business are likely to face further headwinds in coming months due to the continued economic and political uncertainties in Europe, the slowdown in China and subdued consumer sentiment.

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Against this difficult backdrop, it is disappointing that the government has imposed further cost increases on small business with the introduction of the carbon tax, which is now particularly impacting on the more energy-intensive business operations.

Small business is the heart of our nation. There is not a large business that did not commence as a small business. They worked hard and they grew. But what we are seeing now—