Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, the Service Economy and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

I take back that the member opposite took funds from the TWU if he says he did not, but no doubt other members opposite did. No doubt other members opposite took money from the TWU, money that came from the pockets of the two million hardworking men and women of the Australian small business community, who have no representative in the government because the minister for small business is nowhere to be seen. He is not even speaking to this MPI, a matter that goes to the very core of Australian small businesses and their lack of confidence in this new government.

I asked a question the other day of the Prime Minister. I asked the Prime Minister whether he had any particular comment to make about the fact that, according to the Sensis business index, small business confidence in the government has plummeted to the lowest level ever. That was the track record, according to the business index, of the new Rudd Labor government. The Prime Minister got up and spoke about the Australian economy and he belted on about inflation coming from the opposition—that old hoary chestnut. It is the only possible negative thing they can say about the Australian economy. On what do we know the Prime Minister has never uttered one word? He has not uttered one word on why small business confidence in the policies of this government is at its lowest level ever.

I say to all members opposite: it will be very clear what the implications of your policies are. They may not want to do the economic modelling about the impact of the repeal of Work Choices and about the impact of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008. They may not want to know what the answer is in terms of the economic impact. But let me tell you what the unemployment impact will be: the result of this government’s policies on unemployment will be that it will go up, in the same way that the result of this government’s new taxes on fuel excise will be that fuel prices will go up. So we will see more Australians on the unemployment queues as a direct result of this government’s attack on small business in Australia.

I am not surprised that members opposite do not truly understand small business, because so few of them have any knowledge of or background in small business. In fact, the vast bulk of them have probably only entered a small business to shut it down. I have no doubt that the union hacks opposite think that the only way they should deal with a small business is to shut it down. As someone who comes from a part of the country that has the highest concentration of small businesses on a per capita basis, let me explain some fundamentals. I wish the Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy was here because, quite frankly, he could do with a lesson. Especially when unemployment is down to 3.97 per cent, small business employers know one thing: the key asset of their company is its employees. That is the most fundamental lesson a small business person will talk to you about. What do we get from members opposite? What we get from the Deputy Prime Minister of this country is a full-frontal attack on employers, on small business people, on men and women who mortgage their home to take a risk in small business. They are directly attacked by the Deputy Prime Minister, who makes a claim that small business employers will go around looking to sack employees. That is the kind of representation that this union based, union owned party brings to the Australian parliament. It is absolutely an indictment on the government that that is their track record.

I could not help but reflect on the previous member’s contribution to this debate, when he spoke about the evils of Work Choices and about how the Labor government would make sure that they never supported any aspects of Work Choices. Last night in the Senate, on three separate occasions, Senator Wong was presented with an opportunity to guarantee that no Australian worker would be worse off under these new labour laws that the Labor Party has introduced. How ironic it is that, all three times, she refused. But perhaps the greatest irony is the fact that the Labor Party actually voted to retain the Work Choices unfair dismissal exemption threshold of 100 employees. The Labor Party voted to keep the Work Choices 100-employee threshold in place. The member opposite stands up and says that Labor will have no part of Work Choices and that the Labor Party is concerned with looking after Australian workers. The Labor party professes all this concern about employees, but it actually voted to retain the Work Choices unfair dismissal exemption threshold. That is what the Labor Party did. How remarkable! It highlights the hypocrisy of the Rudd Labor government that it would vote to support the current Work Choices threshold.

It must be a sad day for Sharan Burrow and the ACTU. They pumped tens of millions of dollars into getting the Rudd Labor government elected, they bought them the campaign, and they thought to themselves, ‘We’ll overturn the unfair dismissal exemption.’ What happened? The Labor Party turned their backs on the 15-employee threshold. They had the opportunity to vote for it last night but they turned their backs on it and kept the Work Choices threshold. The reason is that the Labor Party just want to run a scare campaign. They are happy to talk down Australian small businesses. They are happy to scare Australians by telling them they can be fired for no reason at the drop of a hat. That is what the Australian Labor Party like to do.

The member opposite sought to have me withdraw my statement that he had not received funding from the TWU, yet I note that the member opposite, the member for Watson, is a member of the Labor Party in New South Wales and that the TWU actually contributed $129,000—

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