Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise to speak on this motion by the member for Forde, which outlines some of the things the coalition did in the last budget in our small business package. I would particularly like to raise comments on some of the government policies made by one M Latham, a former Labor leader and former member for Werriwa, in an article titled 'Big is best', which I think is perhaps the most misguided, foolish and ignorant article I have ever read. In it the former Labor leader calls small business:

… a pack of blank-faced losers serving up kebabs and pizza slices in greasy food halls and shopping malls.

He goes on to say:

… smallness is despised as inadequate …

He goes on to cite examples of why big is best: the Big Banana, the Big Pineapple and the Big Peanut, which is perhaps quite poetic for one M Latham. He also goes on:

Small businesses, in effect, are the garden gnomes of the modern economy—purely ornamental and totally dispensable.

Well, we saw how dispensable they were! Sadly, that was an attitude that was held by that side of the parliament when they were sitting in government, for when they were in government 519,000 jobs were lost in the small business sector.

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