Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I have been looking forward to this speech this afternoon. I hope to be able to entertain you for at least a few minutes because I hold in my hands here today another bill called the Small Business Commissioner Bill 2013, which happens to be a Greens bill. I introduced this to parliament prior to the 2013 federal election when we were in the balance of power with Labor.

I looked at the legislation and the act around the federal Small Business Commissioner. At the time, the Small Business Commissioner was doing the rounds and coming and visiting people like myself who were small business advocates for our parties. Mr Brennan his name was. I had several meetings with him and I certainly enjoyed my discussions. It seemed to me that his office and his role needed a lot of strengthening. It actually needed some power and some teeth and a bit more resourcing.

I did get in touch with Mr Brennan when I put my bill up with the small business commissioners from around the country, not to mention all the various advocates from small business organisations such as Peter Strong from COSBOA and others. Right at the time I was doing this, we had a bit of an issue. I would say it was more than a bit of an issue here in Canberra. We had the construction of the new Australian Security Intelligence Organisation headquarters in Canberra and it was dogged with controversy. There were huge cost overruns.

Unfortunately, the cost blow-outs and questions over approval processes led to some tragedy for a number of small businesses that were sub contracting on that project. Over 100 small businesses at one point in time did not get paid at all and in some cases they went bankrupt. It was a really significant issue for a small area like Canberra. I repeatedly met with a number of those small businesses and I held out hope that a newly appointed small business commissioner could actually help represent them and get them what they were owed by Lend Lease.

The money was provided by the government for the construction of the ASIO building project, that money went to Lend Lease, which was the chief contractor, and of course Lend Lease subbed it out. Urban Contractors was organising a number of the smaller contractors and it went into liquidation or at least went into trading in receivership and, of course, a number of the companies at the bottom of the food chain did not get paid. I thought it would be great example of how the small business commissioner could work, and hit the ground running given that we had literally had hundreds of companies knocking on our door saying 'we are in dire straits'. So we put up this bill.

I would like to tell you a little bit more about this bill. Essentially the functions and powers were covered under division 2. Section 8 sets out the dispute resolution functions of the commissioner. We had sought functions and powers which allowed them to receive and investigate complaints from small businesses about their dealings with departments, statutory agencies and executive agencies of the Commonwealth. It allowed the commissioner to investigate complaints and facilitate resolutions of these complaints including compelling witnesses to attend arbitration and hearings.

There were a whole number of other things that I thought were pretty good. It was a no-brainer. All it needed was some good lawyers, which of course we had in the Senate, a good piece of legislation and then a bit of political will to do it. So anyway, I put the bill up, it went off to committee and, unfortunately, it did not get supported. I was not quite sure why. We were going into an election of course.

I will not say exactly who it was but I did speak to a very influential and well respected small business advocate in this country who said, 'Peter, the only reason your bill is not being supported is the Liberal Party expect to be in government after the election and they want to put up the same bill themselves.' I was not sure if that was the case but now that I look at what is in front of me, it is certainly very similar to what we suggested back in 2013. But unfortunately it does not quite have the teeth we would have wanted to have seen around dispute resolution. Although there are better processes in place than there are at the moment for the Small Business Commissioner, who is essentially an advocate for small business and can take some positive roles in facilitating conflict resolution, we wanted to see something a lot stronger than that.

Models did exist with state small business commissioners. It was great to hear that these small business commissioners cut the burden to the taxpayer in their various states—I had a good meeting with the Victorian Small Business Commissioner—because by getting together with parties, they prevent these things from going to court. Of course that kind of litigation is very expensive, not just for the taxpayer but for the small businesses themselves. The Small Business Commissioner provided an excellent first point of contact for people who needed dispute resolution, especially small companies that were taking on bigger organisations. They, of course, would be prime candidates for using a Small Business Commissioner.

So now we have a different name—a small business ombudsman. I can understand why there are concerns around that name. I have read the submissions that express those concerns. Personally, I do not think it is a game changer but, at the end of the day, I just wanted to point out that the Greens had a very good idea that was very similar to this, and it is a shame it did not get up before the election because then I could have campaigned on it. Now, I am standing here supporting another piece of legislation that is very similar. But it is good for small business. It is not perfect—it could have gone further—but it does at least provide avenues for dispute resolution and advocacy. We also recommended a direct link with the small-business department and the minister and that that relationship would be a regular, reporting relationship and that they would work closely together. I see this reflected in this bill, and I see that as a positive as well.

There are examples where things have fallen between the cracks—between state and federal agencies. There are a number of positive roles for a federal small business ombudsman to play—I will switch my use of the frame and the name now to the 'small business ombudsman'. If you want a real-life example of where this kind of legislation that we have in front of us today could have played a really positive role, once again, go back and have a look at that situation with the cost overrun with the ASIO building, because the government does spend a lot of money in Canberra. The federal government allocates a lot of money, and when we go through the tender and the contract processes a number of small businesses are involved in that. These things are buyer beware—there are risks associated with these large contracts, and that was an example where, had we had a good advocate on the ground who was well resourced and had the ability to help these small businesses, we could have achieved some very positive outcomes.

I look forward to hearing what the other contributors have to say about this, and I hope that it is implemented in the spirit that the Greens brought this original legislation to the Senate with in 2013.