Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to hear that, Member for Blair, and I acknowledge you. You probably would not acknowledge this but there are not a lot on your side compared to this side because of the traditional background that members opposite come from. We do have skin in the game and dirt under the knuckles when it comes to small business. We have seen a whole range of people on our side—the member for Forrest is a dairy farmer. It is not a big business, because we know that a small business is one that is described as not turning over more than $2 million annually. Her farm might be worth a lot more than that in Harvey but, at the end of the day, when times get tough some of these people have to use their own credit card to pay their workers and do not take a wage themselves. That is the challenge of small business. So we need to give them relief.

Let's face it: after the GFC the Australian economy went through quite a downturn. Business confidence was down and for a whole range of reasons we needed to ensure small business realised that we needed to create this ecoclimate for them to grow and develop again, not overtax them and see them as a cash cow. Again, I will tend to be generous, but because these small businesses are not very unionised, because they either are sole traders or employ only one or two people, they do not get the same attention as other businesses do. They often have to fight for themselves and fight for their own terms and conditions. If you are a corner store or if you are somebody who has decided to start up a mechanical business from your house or you do CVs for somebody as a part-time job from home, you are not unionised. You are on your own and you have to create your own business climate and struggle to do your best to get an income. This is the climate that we are having to create for those in small business. They create about $330 billion of Australia's annual output. It probably does not do the argument a lot of good to compare and contrast, but we do know that on our side of the House we have been touted as those who are champions of small business, mainly because we understand it.

We have a different view on collective bargaining and enterprise bargaining and on a whole range of other matters. Other speakers will compare and contrast further than I will. I take at face value that every member in this House is interested in supporting people in their electorate, whether they be families or whether it be an issue like schools or roads et cetera. They also support small business people because they are their constituents. It is just about how you go about helping them. In his budget reply speech the Leader of the Opposition said that they would have gone further. Well, they had six years to do that and they did nothing. I just want to put that on the record.

In my electorate of Canning, as I said, we have a range of people in areas where jobs are tough to get. In fact, the southern part of my electorate around Mandurah has a huge youth unemployment problem, mainly because Mandurah is seen as a dormitory suburb. There is not a lot of industry around Mandurah or in the Peel region. A lot of people leave Perth and, thanks to the Perth to Bunbury Highway, instead of taking an hour and a quarter to get to Perth, they can be there in 45 minutes, and students get on the train to Perth, which I am sure the member for Perth would take a lot of credit for. Unfortunately young people have to leave the area to either educate themselves or to look for work.

My electorate of Canning has a lot of FIFOs in that area. In fact during the boom time my electorate was the second highest, believe it or not, to the member for Brand's electorate for the number of FIFOs that flew in and out. Being less than an hour from Perth, people bought lifestyle blocks and a whole range of accommodation that suited their purposes so that, when they came off after their two weeks on, they could sit down and have a bit of a lifestyle.

I also have drive-in drive-outs in the electorate. I have the Boddington Gold Mine which is now exceeding the super pit in Kalgoorlie in terms of production, which is something like 700,000 ounces of gold a year, which is a massive amount of gold. People drive from Mandurah and the Peel region to jobs at the mine. I even met a day-care person in Boddington, which is nearly 100 kilometres from Mandurah, or thereabouts, who drove from Mandurah just to get the job. Youth unemployment in particular and unemployment generally in the Mandurah region is tough. We need to do what we can to foster anything that will help small businesses starting there.

There is a production called 'Peel away the mask' which was authored by a lady called Dorothy Lucks. When I first became the member for Canning in 2001 she had produced this to give a snapshot of the demographics of the area and the challenges. The area has a mixture of young families, affordable accommodation and a large component of retirees. It is an area with a lot of complexities. As I said, the area still suffers from the fact that it needs greater support to allow businesses to foster and grow. In that area is the City of Mandurah as well as the Shire of Boddington, the Shire of Murray, the Shire of Serpentine-Jarrahdale and the Shire of Waroona. All those areas find it pretty tough. If you have a mortgage and your wife cannot get a job, you struggle to pay your mortgage. Even part-time work, casualisation of the workforce, is something that happens a fair bit in that area. If a small business cannot flourish and make a profit, it cannot put on workers, even casual workers.

What we have done in this budget is to recognise that those wanting to develop in that area have the climate to do so. Alongside that we have had the Minister for the Environment, Greg Hunt, reignite what was called the Green Corps into the Green Army. That does a lot for young people. I was out last week looking at a Green Army project at Birriga Brook near Byford in my electorate. The young people told me that they need the opportunity to get their first job so that they could get a CV which was transportable somewhere else. A lot of them have done minor courses from TAFEs but they could not get a job because they did not have a CV which they could take to someone and say, 'Look, I've been in the workforce'. There is a saying that the hardest thing to getting the job is to get the first job. In this case the first job for these young people was the Green Army.

We know that the previous Green Corps was a highly successful program. The trouble is that, when the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government came in, they combined it with long-term unemployed and work for the dole and totally destroyed it, so it was essentially switched off. We have started it again and we are looking at having many, many projects in the electorate of Canning for young people who want to get their first job. It does not matter if it is in the horticultural industry or a related industry as long as they can get that first job where they get on-the-job training and certification to take it somewhere else. Australia-wide small businesses provide for four and a half million Australians with jobs, providing four in 10 jobs in the private sector, six in 10 in the construction industry, and eight in 10 in agriculture. Measures like, as I said, reducing the corporate tax rate will lead to more jobs and even better wages.

In the remaining time that I have left, I would like to say that the small-business package in the budget was absolutely grabbed with two hands by people from my electorate. I have had nothing but positive comments from people in the electorate in relation to it. I will give you an example. The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries said: 'Cheap tradie utes bolted out our showroom doors last month.' They had to be bolted down because people came in as quickly as they could to take them up. There is something like a 45 per cent increase in the sale of utes in Australia at the moment—today—because of this package. As we know, when people spend money it then goes around. The person in the car yard makes money and the mechanic servicing the car yard makes some money—it goes around and it helps the economy in general.

The 2015 budget is a historic budget for the growth of jobs and small businesses around Australia, and also in the electorate of Canning. This will take away a lot of the red tape that has also been a hindrance to small business. We are committed to doing everything possible to assist the small-business sector to continue as a source of growth and unemployment relief, by also seeing that they get involved in innovation.

Innovation and productivity are the keys to economic growth. Just getting a job is not necessarily the only thing—getting productivity out of people working has a multiplier effect. We know that small-business men and women and their employees are one of the driving forces for our future prosperity. While those opposite do not necessarily oppose this, and we know that Bill Shorten said he would go further, we need their support. We know that we are going to get that support when it goes to the Senate. The sooner we can get this package in place the better it will be for small businesses and the employees of Australia.

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