Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Water Resources and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge my colleague on my other side, the member for Dobell. I am terribly concerned about his isolated communities on the Central Coast. I wonder whether his definition of isolation is that you are more than 100 yards from the F3. I am just a little concerned. We have areas in my electorate the size of the Central Coast and they are known as horse paddocks, but we will move on from there.

The government’s stimulus spending is having a dramatic effect on small business in my electorate and it is not positive. Right from the start, they are the people forgotten by this government. For a start, there is the amount of correspondence I got from people when the initial $900 stimulus spending came out. Who did not get it? I will tell you who did not get it: small business owners. Do you know why they did not get it? Because the previous year they did not make a profit. You actually had to have an income. If you were on $60,000 a year, you got $900. If you were in a small business and had not made a profit for the year, you missed out.

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