Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Like the other speakers in this House, I too am proud to support the motion that is before us, because it is an endorsement of former Labor government policy—policy that I was very proud to support when it was rolled out. This was good, solid Labor policy which acknowledged the important role that our small businesses play and which gave them the incentives to invest and grow. Can you imagine the shock upon the election of a government that pretends to be the government of small business—they pretend to be the party of small business—when they rolled back these reforms? In their first budget they smashed them and they slashed them. They argued that they were worthless reforms. They backed down on good reforms that helped small business. In my electorate, like most electorates, there is a strong network of small businesses. In Bendigo and in regional Victoria, we have a lot of small businesses working hard not just to employ people but also to provide the goods and services that our communities need.

On this year's budget night, the government realised the error of their mistakes and reinstated the Labor reforms—the Labor government reforms. We are quite proud to stand here tonight again to put on the record that we supported them when we were in government and we support them again today, like we did on budget night. The fact is that the Labor Party is the party for small business, and the Labor Party has always been the party for small business. We resent the fact that those opposite stand up and claim to be the party of small business. They are not. They have never employed somebody in small business and spoken to them about a fair wage. They have never grown up in a small business and known what it is like to sacrifice your Saturdays and Sundays to work. They have never really owned a small business. They try to claim that they do, but really they are here to champion only one end of town—that is not the small business end of town and that is not the people who work for small businesses; that is just the Canberra end of town and that is just the big business end of town.

I am one of those people who proudly stands before you to say I grew up in a small business. I grew up in a second-hand furniture store which today probably would not exist, because of cheap imports that have been dumped on our market. I worked on Saturdays. It is where I learned how to count money. Our family really looked forward to Sundays, because Sunday was the day off. We were in a tourist area. We were on the Sunshine Coast, and we would close on Sundays. It was the family day.

See this speech in context