Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Recently I was speaking to a small-business owner in Melbourne who was telling me that she was in talks with her accountant to close down her small business because it was simply no longer viable. This is unfortunately a very common refrain. One year ago, 43 per cent of small businesses reported that they weren't breaking even. Well, now it's 49 per cent that aren't breaking even and have no chance of turning a profit. There are 2.5 million small businesses in Australia, and 49 per cent of them are not making a profit. Because of high inflation, high interest rates, high energy bills and massive amounts of red tape, life is that much harder for these businesses.

The Select Committee on the Cost of Living heard last Friday that the combination of complex changes to industrial relations and the red tape that comes with them is costing businesses dearly. Not only are they spending more time on administration but it's also preventing them putting on more employees—the irony of that! Businesses are telling me that it's sucking the aspiration out of them. Why run a business, why lose sleep, why take risks, when you can simply stand at a construction site and turn a lollipop for so much less risk?

I was out in regional Victoria recently, where I attended a small-business roundtable hosted by our Liberal candidate for Bendigo, Matt Evans. We heard from some fantastic female small-business owners, including Greta from Bendigo Brittle and Mandy from Edwards Providore, but they are all doing it really tough. Small businesses are the engine room of our economy, but our concern is that, instead of setting small businesses up for success, the Albanese government has created conditions for failure. The cost of overheads and rising taxes are making it untenable to employ more people, and the inflexibility of licences and regulations is acting as a speed hump to growth. The Liberal Party will always be a party for small businesses, because we know how vital they are to the local economy and local communities.