Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

I speak in support of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Lower Taxes for Small and Medium Businesses) Bill 2018. Labor are pleased to support lowering tax rates for small to medium enterprises. We've got a good track record of supporting such enterprises throughout the country, and that's why we've offered support to the government to provide certainty in the lead-up to the next election. But the government have been checkmated on this. They tried to use this issue as a political wedge. They tried to use this as something to drive a wedge between the Labor Party and the small business community, but it's backfired. It's backfired tremendously on the government because, in announcing this policy, they failed to find a way to fund it in the budget. They announced these tax cuts for small to medium enterprises, but there's no announcement about how they're actually going to find the money in the budget to fund this type of reform.

When you talk about being fiscally responsible, when you talk about understanding the running of a business, the No. 1 factor in being successful is knowing how to budget, knowing how to make sure that the amount of money that's coming into the budget is more than is going out and that the business remains successful, but they've been unable to do that with respect to this bill.

Labor, on the other hand, have demonstrated that we are fiscally responsible. In supporting this bill, we've found a way to fund this particular tax cut and bring it forward early, and that is to delay, by one year, the Australian Investment Guarantee that Labor proposes—another solid policy that will support small businesses.

This government likes to talk a big game when it comes to the business community. They like to travel around Australia saying—and we've just heard it—'We're the ones who support small business.' They use the words, 'It's in our DNA.' Well, ask the small business community how they're feeling about that DNA at the moment. Ask them: how are they feeling about skyrocketing electricity prices because of this government? How are they feeling about the two-year delay to the banking royal commission because of this government? How are they feeling about the disaster that is the NBN and most small businesses being unable to get high-quality broadband to ensure that they can run an enterprise that has a connected approach to doing business? Ask this government about the delays that they've instituted because of the disaster that is the National Broadband Network. And ask them about the on-off, stop-start approach to asset write-offs that this government has brought about.

When it comes to electricity prices, we all know that this government has been an abject failure. The No. 1 cost impost on small businesses in this country at the moment is skyrocketing electricity prices. You travel anywhere around Australia and ask small businesses what their No. 1 issue is and why they're struggling at the moment. It's because of electricity prices increasing, and that's due to the 5½ years of this government failing to implement a decent policy that provides certainty to ensure that the private sector invests in electricity. We've got the minister sitting here; what has he announced since he has been the minister? Nothing—a big fat zero! But I've got to give it to him—he is not alone in that, because he's following in the tradition of his predecessors who have done exactly the same thing. For five years they've announced nothing—a big doughnut—when it comes to helping small businesses reduce their electricity costs.

First, the government asked the Chief Scientist, Alan Finkel, to come up with a policy that would provide certainty and reduce electricity prices. And he did that. He came up with the clean energy target. He put that to the government. The Prime Minister at the time, Malcolm Turnbull, and the energy minister at the time, Josh Frydenberg, said, 'This is a great policy. This is the right thing to do. It will reduce emissions and cut electricity prices.' They even put a figure on the amount of reductions in electricity prices. Well, that lasted a day. The member for Warringah and those like the minister sitting at the desk here went to work to undermine that policy, and that was off the table. So they asked the Chief Scientist to go away and have another go at it. And he did. He came back with a second version of that policy. Once again, the Prime Minister and the minister for energy said, 'This is fantastic. This is great stuff from the Chief Scientist. We will reduce electricity prices and we'll ensure that we meet our emissions reduction targets.' Well, that one lasted about a week, and then that was off the table.

Then they went into this policy vacuum and argued amongst themselves for a number of months, and then they came up with the National Energy Guarantee. They appointed a board of specialists, the Energy Security Board, to come up with a proposal that would provide a guarantee for a reliability mechanism and, at the same time, hopefully, reduce electricity costs. That body went away and did a fair bit of work—and it cost quite a bit of money, in the nature of $10 million; that is not cheap by anyone's standards—and they came up with a report, and they recommended the National Energy Guarantee. Once again, the Prime Minister said, 'This is fantastic. This is great work,' and the energy minister said, 'This is fantastic. This will ensure that we can reduce electricity prices and meet our emissions targets.' And then those in the right wing of the Liberal Party again went to work, and what did they do? Over a series of months, they undermined that particular policy. It was actually voted up in the party room and became policy.

The Labor Party took the approach of trying to work on a bipartisan basis with the government. It wasn't our ideal policy but we said, in the interests of ending this war around climate change and energy policy in Australia, we would negotiate and look to agree with the government on this issue to try and put this to bed and provide certainty for the private sector. The private sector has been screaming for that certainty for a number of years and welcomed the commitment that Labor gave to working with the government. What happened? Once again, this rabble within the Liberal Party undermined the Prime Minister, took him out and then took out the policy at the same time. The policy lasted about a day after the last Prime Minister was removed from office.

The small business community and the larger business community in Australia are so fed up with this government that they've said, 'You guys can't even work as a government anymore. You're so incompetent that we'll go out on our own. We'll come up with our own energy policy.' These businesses of Australia, the small businesses that are the subject of this particular tax reform that we're negotiating here today, have given up on this government, completely given up on them and said, 'We'll go out on our own'. They announced last week they're going to develop their own energy policy. They're going to do the work that government can't do and announce their own energy policy because they know that this lot are incompetent and can't even agree on a policy to reduce electricity prices. That is the reason why the small-business community are up in arms in Australia about this government's approach to supporting them.

Labor have been listening to the small-business community. For the past few years in opposition, we've been travelling around the country talking to small businesses and listening to them. The message has been very, very clear: they do want some tax relief, and Labor agreed to support tax cuts for small business. But they also wanted the ability to invest in their businesses and government support to grow their businesses to ensure that they could look at buying new capital to expand the opportunities for growth in new markets and look at buying new equipment to ensure that their businesses are more efficient and can operate more effectively.

Labor listened to those pleas and those requests and we instituted a policy that responds to them. The Australian Investment Guarantee will provide businesses with the ability to immediately deduct in the first year particular assets up to a value, to ensure that businesses get that immediate relief and that incentive to invest and grow their businesses. That's the way you listen to the small business community. That's how you make sure that you're listening to their concerns and working in their interests. We've also said, as I mentioned earlier, that we'd be willing, in the interests of small businesses, to look at a National Energy Guarantee and do something about electricity prices.

Labor have been calling for the last three years for a royal commission into banking and financial services. Access to banks and financial services and to credit to grow a business is vitally important. But businesses want to know that, when they access that credit, they're getting a fair deal. And some of the anecdotes that have been coming out of the royal commission don't represent a fair deal at all. This government and Australia have known about this for some time but this government and this Prime Minister voted 26 times against that royal commission, against providing the opportunity to have a look at what was going on in financial services and provide some relief for small businesses and some certainty for them to invest.

It's Labor that have been listening to those small businesses and it's Labor that have been acting fiscally responsibly in supporting this particular amendment because we found a way, in our budget, to fund this particular proposal. Unlike the government, we've done the thing that all small businesses in Australia do—that is, find a way to fund new expenditure, find a way to ensure that your books balance at the end of the day—and that's a far cry from the response that they'll get from this incompetent and out-of-touch government.

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