Cory Bernardi (SA, Australian Conservatives) Share this | Hansard source

I have to say at the outset that I was somewhat conflicted about how to go on this bill, because I am a free marketeer. I do believe markets are, in general, very good, but I'm being tortured by what Senator McKim has said: that this bill is somewhat a progressive agenda and an initiative of the Greens. If ever it's going to turn off my vote, he's nearly done it! But I hate to say that he's got a point. Free markets only work where there is a level playing field, if you will. As I remarked in the Senate last week, there is not a level playing field for small business in this country.

When I'm talking about small business, I'm not so much talking about the medium-sized businesses that have an HR department that can do those things. I'm really concerned for the mum and dad operators—the ones that put their financial lives on the line. They sacrifice a lot of family time and mortgage their houses to live the dream and start a business. Sometimes they don't pay themselves; they struggle and pay their employees. I find it extraordinary, just extraordinary, that these small businesses, which have to deal with the bureaucracy and the red tape that government foists upon them—they have to deal with the industrial relations laws that are an impediment to employment; they have to deal with onerous taxation requirements and occupational health and safety requirements—just to live their part of the dream, are also having to compete with big business that has been allowed to trade away employee entitlements to benefit the union movement.

Senator McKim is happy to put his anti-Catholic rhetoric out there and blame the shoppies union and the ghost of BA Santamaria and so forth. Let's dismiss the Greens' hatred of religion, unless it's the worship of the earth, and deal with the facts. It is wrong for a union to be able to do a deal with business that benefits the union and disadvantages the worker. That is absolutely wrong. We know there is a huge track record of this. Mr Shorten himself is as guilty as sin in this respect. I do note that the minister said, in effect, under the laws about corrupting benefits for unions that were changed last week, that Mr Shorten would probably find himself charged with an offence were he to do the same thing again today.

I am also quite sympathetic to the shoppies union, as Senator McKim said. They are a bastion of conservativism, or they were until recent times. That doesn't mean they are perfect. There is only one pure conservative party in the place and the shoppies are welcome to join it any time they'd like to. I'll straighten out their sharp edges, if you like, and we can ensure there is a voice for conservativism across the political divide. But they've done the wrong thing here, and I cannot, in good conscience, stand and defend big business, notwithstanding the benefits they provide to the Australian people. They provide stacks of jobs, they provide opportunities, they invest and all of those things, which are positive, so I'm not anti-big business, but I am absolutely pro small business.

On balance, this gets the balance right in protecting small business. When I say 'protecting', I mean in trying to level the playing field as much as it can. This is the great torment for us; there's no perfect science in this. Do you say, 'Big business will misuse its market power?' Yes, that benefits consumers in the short term and they can provide lower priced products, but I also know that competition is absolutely vital. If I look at Coles and Woolworths—it's easy to beat up on them, and I will—they have been charging Australian consumers far in excess of what their international competitors do from a margin point of view, which means the cost of our groceries, the cost of our goods and services are far greater here than they should be. Australia is a high cost-of-living country.

This is also compounded by the fact that small business is not effectively able to compete where there is a misuse of market power, there are onerous obligations, there is a huge potential for legal consequences and costs incurred simply to have the fight and have the battle. You can be mobbed in small business via lawfare that will cost you hundreds of dollars every time you have to respond to a legal letter from one of the big businesses, and it is simply onerous. Sometimes small business goes, 'It's just too hard.' We need to be able to get some legal redress here.

But I'm talking about the very smallest businesses. I know that later on you're going to have a discussion and one of the senators will come in here and talk about misuse of market power, and they're going to be defending a big supermarket chain that is not Coles or Woolworths. They will be defending them and saying, 'This is a small business that's really struggling.' A small business that turns over $100 million a year is not that small a business, as far as I'm concerned. Similarly, it would be no coincidence that this small business that a senator later on will talk about will no doubt mention on the public record that all the employees of that small business were given time off or paid to man their polling booths for them. Let's not pretend that some of the strongest advocates in this space are not absolutely self-interested.

What I can tell you is that I'm interested in making sure that small business in this country gets a fair go. I want to make sure that Australian consumers get a fair go. In order to do that, it sometimes means trading off the short-term immediate benefits that come with a lower price tag, which eventually drives out competition and leaves a market monopoly or a duopoly. I'm very happy to see that change. I'm happy to see the international entrants come into this space—in the retail space, in the consumer goods space—but, more importantly, I want small businesses to be able to have a crack. That means they've got to be able not only to source their products but to run their businesses on par.

If there was any doubt about my support for this test, it was effectively nullified when I recognised just what the union movement had done in trading away workers' rights so that Coles and Woolworths could get some sort of competitive advantage—as if they didn't have it already—and so that the unions themselves could benefit from it. This is the most self-interested behaviour. It was Sir Robert Menzies, who would be an Australian Conservative today—if he were alive I am sure he would be—