Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. I take that admonition. We have to provide more consistency as a parliament, because people expect that. I was at a dinner with some businesspeople the other night and they were bemoaning the fact that when they go overseas and they are talking to people in China or in Asia they have to spend ages talking about the Australian Senate, how it works and the risks of it.

Senator McEwen interjecting—

Sorry, Senator McEwen, but that is exactly what they said. Maybe they were lying to me, but they said they had an hour meeting with a major investor in China recently and they spent 30 minutes talking about the Australian Senate—30 minutes of that hour talking about it. That is because of us. We have contributed to that. We have all contributed to that, and we are all continuing to contribute to that with our behaviour today.

I had hoped that we would have a different future. I had hoped that, with the change, things would be different—and I think for the last few months they have been. The Palmer United Party and others have taken a different approach and we have passed legislation. It has taken us a long time. We had to sit late the other night, but we got it done. But, today, we are going back to that different approach which is ad hoc and which means that we wear a different colour shirt every day depending on who we are talking to. I hope that can change in the future.

I want to finish by commending the work that Minister Cormann has done in the last few years in prosecuting this issue. He has remained consistent. I do hope that we can find a different way to remove this multimillion dollar regulatory burden on the small businesses of this country, for those businesses that provide financial advice that are not involved in big companies. Minister Cormann made a very good point earlier in this debate—that is, that it is not the big businesses in this country that have to worry about the changes that we are making today; it is the small businesses. They are the people who cannot do this. They must be pulling their hair out right now, thinking they have just got a new framework, it has been put in place and it had the confidence of this parliament—it was voted on by this place—and now, today, we are going to change it all for them.

Who have they got to help them? Who have they got to help them provide their advice? I know that we complain that we do not have enough advisers. It is hard for us. Who do they have? Who do they have to provide advice for them on the changes that we are going to make now? They are going to have to do it all themselves. They are going to have to stay back this weekend and get across it in more detail. They are going to have to spend less time with their kids because of the things we have done in this place. I know that I am not going to change what is going to happen tonight, but I want to put on record that what we are doing is hurting small businesses in this nation. It has to stop and we have to have a different approach.