Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The issue we have today is whether the government will support the opposition's amendment to actually give the Australian public a chance to vote on this policy measure. They have been denied that opportunity. They were reassured that no such proposal would be introduced by a Labor government that Prime Minister Gillard led, yet here we are today talking about this very measure that the Australian public was assured they would not be confronted with. Just today the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry have released yet another paper that shows how the government has failed to calculate the impact of its carbon tax on the small and medium enterprises of Australia. The amendment that the opposition has put forward would give the minister an opportunity to carefully examine this material. Members on all sides of the chamber should also consider the urging of ACCI where they say:

Armed with this research all parliamentarians should think again before burdening small business with the carbon tax …

ACCI go on to point out how some of the comparable schemes that the government refers to have none of the characteristics of the carbon tax being imposed on the Australian public and none of the burdens that are being imposed on the small- and medium-sized enterprises of Australia. There is an opportunity here for government members, by supporting the opposition's amendment, to recover some policy and political legitimacy around this debate. Time and time again there are examples of where the government has failed to understand the impact of its changes. Even the Victorian government study, undertaken by Deloittes Access Economics, makes the point that the parameters that the Commonwealth has used in its modelling assumes zero employment impacts. That is the assumption. Yet when you actually look at the impacts, in my electorate alone, by 2015 an estimated 1,385 will be lost in the City of Frankston and Mornington Peninsula Shire areas and some $154 million of economic output will be lost. Time and time again these facts are brought before the government and it has failed to address them.

There is even the insult that the minister inflicted on the small business community, telling them not to worry about the impact of the carbon tax because 'you can't get your car serviced in India and your dry-cleaning done in China'. What a nonsense argument that is. His actions and the government's carbon tax policy are impacting on demand. It is already undermining small business viability and is hollowing out employment in that important sector. (Time expired)

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