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

I am perpetually deferential! All the small business community have got is haranguing from this government—no direct assistance; just this verbal abuse that, if they dare put up their prices, they will have the full weight of the ACCC coming down on them and yet, at the same time, households are being told, 'Well, there might be price increases but we have compensated you for that.'

There has been no modelling done by this government on any impact of the carbon tax on any small business type or size, on any goods or services that they provide, on any different business structure, on any supply chain, where the carbon tax builds and builds and builds at every step along the way.

Think of an ice-creamery in Hervey Bay. There they have to face a range of impacts. Let us talk about the dairy. The simple milking of the cows is going to have a carbon tax impact—an energy-intensive hot-water requirement to maintain hygiene. The freight costs will then get moved on. You then go beyond to the dairy itself, once the cows have been milked, to process the milk—energy-intensive; perishable goods; refrigerant everywhere. It then may go on to an ice-cream manufacturer—same all over again: embedded energy costs of the earlier stages plus their own refrigerant, their own energy costs, their own transport costs, their own impact on packaging. It will build and it will build.

Because the ice-creamery that Mr Neville and I might run at Hervey Bay is a small one, we cannot buy directly from the wholesale manufacturer; it would probably go off to a midpoint, not directly from the producer of the ice-cream but a wholesaler, and then maybe on to someone else, and finally we might get that input. The world's largest carbon tax has built at every stage of that production process—has accumulated, has compounded. Hopefully there is a margin on top for the business so that they can stay afloat to go and employ people.

Then we face the consumers, who have heard the government go around saying, 'Only the top few hundred emitters will be paying the carbon tax.' No, that is wrong; we will all be paying the carbon tax. We will all be paying the carbon tax, and every small business will be hurt by the carbon tax. And where will their compensation come from? Well, there is none. There is no compensation whatsoever.

So what has the coalition had to do? The coalition has had to go out there and do the government's work for it, to explain that there are impacts in the supply chain and in the energy costs that are going to affect small business. It has been the coalition that has had to provide the small businesses with the assistance to communicate the very essence of the government's scheme—that these cost impacts will work their way through the system, that somehow people will only buy half an ice-cream rather than a full ice-cream, and the costs will be passed on but the consumer is being compensated.

Has the government bothered to explain that to anybody? Has the government sought to assure small businesses that the very design of its carbon tax is intended to push up their costs, is intended to have an impact on the supply chain, is intended to make refrigeration more expensive, and is intended to then be passed on, as the Prime Minister ultimately conceded in her contribution today? No, it has not done that at all. The government has gone out there trying to create a completely false impression of who is paying for the carbon tax and what it actually means for consumers. So we have had to do the government's work for it. It has done the ads, where the carbon tax dare not speak its name and there is a household assistance love just falling from the sky—apparently for no other reason than the benevolence of the government. You have then had no assistance from the Marcel Marceau of small-business ministers—never utters a word about the impact on a key area of our constituency. So the coalition has had to do it. The coalition has had to provide small businesses throughout Australia with an easily understandable, accurate, reliable and dependable explanation about the government's carbon tax.

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