Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] I'd like to respond to what Senator Lambie just said. Small businesses have struggled with not getting payments from businesses but in terms of the legislation it has been taken into consideration that mandating a time of 30 days for businesses to pay may be a problem for the farming sector, especially now. The farming sector has contracts with the big end of town—selling their products to Coles or Woolies—and usually they do get paid within seven days, or maybe 14 days or even 21 days. But if we mandate 30 days in the legislation, you will have big business saying, 'Now I don't have to pay you until 30 days time,' and that is going to affect farmers. Different businesses have different ways of paying. The farmers may deal with companies like Elders. Farmers buy their seed, their fertiliser and what they need for farming from them. These businesses give the farmers long contracts, and that allows the farmers to get their crops in before they pay them back. If we mandate a 30-day contract, you are going to force these farmers to try and find the money to pay back these businesses.

I agree that the regime does need to be cleaned up, which is why I support the government's bill. You're going to name and shame these big businesses, which has been proven to work overseas, because people look at their payment times. There are heavy fines for businesses that don't report their payment times. That is one way to deal with it. Then it's up to the businesses themselves whether they want to do business with these other companies that are not paying. The extension times of some of these businesses are going out to 90 days or 120-plus days. This is a way of reining in those payment times. My amendment seeks to impose a two-year review period. The performance of these businesses will be reviewed, and if it hasn't worked we could then look at setting a payment time—possibly the 30 days. But we have to take into consideration the farming sector, who have advised my office that they don't want it mandated to a certain period of time. A lot of businesses have different payment times.

The government is also trying to bring in e-invoicing and encouraging more businesses to use e-invoicing and, hopefully, get their payments done within a five-day period. Proposed subsection (2)(d)(ii) in my amendment basically says that the review will look at imposing a requirement to pay interest on a payment if the reporting entity has failed to pay a small business invoice issued to the entity within the period specified in the terms of the relevant contract. So the intention is that if businesses don't pay within a specified period of time they will be paying interest to the company they owe the money to. But I believe that, under the circumstances, especially the way things are at the moment in terms of COVID-19 and how it has affected businesses, we need to have this period of time to see how this works. My amendment requires that there be a review to see whether or not it has worked and whether or not it has changed the payment times from these big businesses and companies that are actually not paying the smaller contractors. And I do say that it is very good to see that the government have now reduced their payment times and are paying under the 30 days. They've got to set the precedent for the rest of the community, and that's exactly what they have done.

I understand the frustration of Senator Lambie. I get it. We hear it all the time. I personally have been a small-business person most of my life, so I understand where you're coming from. I hear it from tradies, the people who don't get their payments, but if we go in with a sledgehammer we could end up with nothing. You've got to try and find a balance between those people who are getting their early payments and those people who are actually paying over excessive time frames.

I support the bill as amended by my amendments. If it doesn't work, we will have in place a mechanism to rein in businesses, bring in heavy fines and look at mandating payment times then. Let's get feedback from the community to see how businesses feel about it and see whether or not it is working. If it's not working, then we can come in very hard to try and address the imbalances. I believe we should give it a go, and see where we stand in two years time.