Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I look forward to making my contribution to this part of the day's proceedings. I will touch on the cost of living, but I just want to go to the question that Senator McGrath asked in question time around small businesses. I want to say this with the greatest of respect: I don't know Senator McGrath's background—in fact, I don't know the backgrounds of the majority of those on the other side—but I actually was in a small business. My wife and I had our own little trucking company, and we had 11 years as owner-drivers, progressing from a rigid around town as a 20-year-old to running road trains from Perth to Darwin for the last 2½ years. So I do have a little bit of knowledge from my own patch, my history and my world of what small businesses want and what small businesses need.

Those on the other side who have been in small business will speak for themselves, I have no doubt. My good friend Senator Colbeck is a man who, like myself, worked with his hands, and I have the greatest respect for those who have come from that background. In this chamber in February and leading up to February, we had hundreds of thousands of small business owners and owner-drivers who were, through their associations—whether it be the TWU, the National Road Freighters or the membership of the state organisations, such as VTA, QTA, Western Roads Federation, Tasmanian Transport Association, NatRoad—pleading with that side of the chamber to pass the transport reforms so that the small businesses in this nation wouldn't continue to be screwed by the top end of the supply chain. Payment times can go from 60 to 90 to 150 days—and I won't name that client, but they're a big beer maker—and they expect small businesses to carry their costs.

I find it galling that that side became the champions of small business. When $24 million was put into a scare campaign, they said that, if transport reform had come here, that would not have assisted the small businesses in transport that were pleading for reform. I'll tell you who led the charge. Mobs like COSBOA and the National Farmers Federation did not want to see small businesses in the transport industry be safe, sustainable and viable. It's alright for their small businesses to want to be safe, sustainable and viable—and I want them to be too—but not us truckies and not transport companies. The Minerals Council of Australia—the less said about that mob the better. But, I have to say, they led the charge of transport reform, saying how that would somehow crucify the mining industry. I don't know how that was supposed to happen. Let's not forget the Business Council of Australia, who do not represent small businesses—far from it. In fact, the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Australian Industry Group were all partners in crime, chipping money into the $24 million pot to fight against the transport reforms so that our small businesses could be safe, sustainable and viable. They represent the big end of town. These are the ones. They represent the construction mobs and the miners and all those who want to suppress the supply chains at the expense of small family businesses.

I sit there and I am gobsmacked. I absolutely cannot believe—and the people of Australia have to understand this—that that mob not once came up to the government and said, 'We don't want to close the loopholes, but we understand that small businesses in transport want to be protected and want to have their rights and want to be around for generation after generation.' How dare they want to make money and pay their debts and pocket a few bob to buy a new truck or new fork or a new yard! Not once did that side offer any alternative. Not once did they come up and say, 'How can we meet with the trucking industry and understand that those small businesses have their needs and their concerns?'

To wrap it up, I don't want to be crass, but I feel like I want to vomit when I hear that side over there insulting the transport industry, as each and every one of you did. There is no mistake about that. The trucking companies, the trucking families and the owner-drivers here in this nation won't forget because I'm going to be reminding them every opportunity I can that that side over there, and some of the crossbench—Senator Hanson and Senator Lambie and co—sent the same middle finger to the trucking industry.