Arthur Sinodinos (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Lies, lies and damn statistics. Honestly, what we have just heard from Senator Bishop itself constitutes lies because he is flying in the face of the field evidence that has been provided even this very day by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry with their report on trading conditions in the small business. They talk about the trading conditions being below the average of the last five years, which also include the period of the global financial crisis. Their survey talks about the decline in various economic indicators of the health of small business. Also, Senator Bishop—through you, Mr Deputy President—the survey talks about how taxes and charges are the No. 1 issue for small business. You may be cynical and say people do not like taxes, but the fact of the matter is you are not shooting the opposition, you are shooting the messenger in small business. That shows what you think of small business. Instead of being out there giving succour to small business, instead of being out there asking, 'How can we help you to get through this?' you are blithely saying, 'Well, they're not actually subject to the carbon tax and in any case they can always pass this on.' The fact is that this survey is field evidence, it is facts not lies, and it shows that small businesses in Australia today are doing it tough—and that means they do not have the capacity to pass on big price rises.

We talk about the impact of the carbon price, including on gas refrigerant and other things that are going up quite markedly. The fact of the matter is that this is all coming at a time when other costs are going up for small businesses. They have the superannuation guarantee starting to go up. They have electricity prices also going up for other reasons, as has been mentioned. So small businesses are doing it tough at the moment. They see the carbon tax, something which is a discrete government decision, and they say to themselves, 'Why is government making it any worse for us than it already is? And government says, 'Well, you can just pass it on.' But, as Senator Kroger so eloquently indicated, if you do not understand small business you do not understand the competitive environment that small business faces. It is not easy to pass costs on. Your choices are these: lower your profits, lower your employment, lower your investment. Lower profits will ultimately lead to either lower employment or lower investment in small business, the engine room of the economy. This is the dilemma we face.

I want to take up the issue of what the modelling said or did not say about the impact of the carbon price on electricity costs and other costs facing small business. Contrary to what Senator Wong said, there was no discrete modelling of the impact on small business. I wish Senator Crossin was still here to hear that. There were estimates made through the modelling about the macroeconomic impact of the carbon tax, in terms of its impact on the CPI and the rest. There was modelling done on discrete sectors, but by firm size that modelling was not done, contrary to what Senator Wong said—and that was the point of my question.

We have to consider that small businesses are being hit by bigger businesses which are directly subject to the carbon price and are passing their cost increases back through the supply chain to their suppliers and people who are customers of theirs. That means that small businesses cop it in the neck because big businesses are asking them to take up the slack when it comes to the impact of the carbon tax. Of course, because small businesses are unable to do that or they are forced to do that in order to retain the custom of big businesses, you have this situation where small businesses are being squeezed.

I have been surprised in the time I have been here about the extent to which the government does not talk about small business in a positive way, only in a defensive way: 'We may have imposed X on them over here but we are giving this or that particular concession.' As I noted earlier, these concessions are occurring at a time when a broad range of costs are going up for small business, so the challenge that lies ahead for any future government is how to take the burden off small business in a sustainable way. The coalition have indicated that that will be done by, first and foremost, taking the carbon tax off the backs of business, including small business, but we need to go further. As my colleague in another place noted today, more than 18,000 regulations have come in since this government has been in office and fewer than 90 or so have been repealed. We have a deal of work to do in that whole regulatory space because small business does not have the overheads to deal with the burden of regulation. That regulation is at the Commonwealth, state and local levels and it is a real issue. It is not the merits of an individual regulation; it is the fact that each individual regulation comes on top of so much new regulation. The coalition are committed to finding a way through that. As I reiterate today, small business is being affected by the carbon tax. The government should not have their head in the sand.(Time expired)

Question agreed to.