Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. I'm really pleased that you let me know about the bill and brought me back to it. We know the NBN and the internet are essential for the operations of small business. In fact, in my electorate of Rockingham, there is a local pool shop that I struggle to contact because their phone has been down. Their NBN line has been connected improperly, and they continue to pay phone bills to both Optus and Telstra because they are unable to sort through the mess that this government's NBN has introduced. So that's the relevance of what I was saying: if you're going to introduce an inferior national broadband project and introduce it very poorly, small businesses—like the pool shop that I have to go to to help my mum maintain her pool—cannot do business. It's really difficult. They don't have fibre lines. They have to use dongles. They pay extra. Despite trying to help them, they are still working in a maze and a mess of a failed NBN service in Rockingham. I wasn't going to mention it, but thank you very much for reminding me.

The NBN is a critical productivity answer and all businesses rely on it. Ninety-five per cent of businesses have internet access, with internet income estimated to be worth $394 billion annually. As we know, we've been going backwards. Australia now ranks below countries like Kazakhstan when it comes to broadband speed and we're ranked 55th internationally, which is no good for small businesses.

I'm going to talk about the NBN service guarantee. Again, that is really important for small businesses. In addition to a lower tax rate for small business, Labor will deliver a better experience for NBN consumers and small businesses so that they may work within the regulated time frame, and wholesale service standards will be set for the benefit of small businesses for things like fault rectification, installations and missed appointments. Labor will also establish stronger penalties to protect small businesses on the NBN so that they might get a better service more quickly and improve their bottom line and therefore, hopefully, drive further investment in those small businesses and further employment, which is what we want to happen.

Labor does have other small-business policies in addition to supporting the government's current proposal for the taxation reduction for small and medium enterprises. We support and have announced implementing a second commissioner of taxation, which we predict will help service that small-business community and set up an appeals process within the ATO that is separate from the decision-making processes of the ATO, which, as we have seen in some media reports, seems to be targeting sometimes small businesses that don't have quite the financial wherewithal to tackle some of the challenges that the ATO puts out to them.

In other small-business policies, the shadow Assistant Treasurer, the member for Fenner, has recently announced 'Your car, your choice' policy, which will ensure car manufacturers share their technical information to ensure that vehicles can be serviced by any mechanic, creating a level playing field for independent mechanics. As we know, independent mechanics are small businesses all around all electorates across this country. This policy, in addition to lowering taxes for small and medium businesses, will benefit them.

Labor will also improve access to justice for small business and level the playing field in cases of anticompetitive behaviour by big business. We will restore the balance by letting a small business request a no-adverse costs order early in a court case. Similar to the lower taxes for small and medium businesses that we are talking about today, improving access to justice for small business in this manner will be of advantage to small and medium businesses.

We also seek to take action against phoenixing activity, and we hope the government might also take some action to make phoenixing activity more difficult for some corporations. We know that some small businesses don't do the right thing and they create an unlevel playing field by cheating, quite frankly. They dodge their own bills which are the bills that need to go to other small businesses, which, of course, tend to employ people. The problem is that some companies decide to not pay their invoices, not pay their employees, dodge superannuation, dodge penalty rates and then go into a phoenix-like arrangement, which of course is basically cheating on the community as well as on all small businesses in the community which have to participate alongside them.

I would like to reflect on another policy that the government can feel free to take up—that is, to establish an independent Australian skills authority that will advise on skills shortages and prioritise training investment in skills shortages in areas that are identified by the authority. We anticipate this will also be of great benefit to small and medium businesses, in addition to the taxation package we are talking about today. Skills of all sorts and the practical and vocational education that goes through TAFE are essential for small businesses right around this country, whether it be mechanics, carpenters, all sorts of trades—and trades that participate in the mining industry. There are small and medium-sized businesses right across the country that use trade training centres to participate in the defence contracts supply chain—in Henderson, for example, south of Fremantle and north of Kwinana, but also into the mining and resources sector in Western Australia.

All in all, there is no doubt Labor has and always will be a friend of small business. Sometimes misinformation is put around by our parliamentary colleagues on the other side about how we do not know much about small business. I grew up in a small business. I know many colleagues here have run and owned a small business, or their partners have. They have grown up in small businesses. I know there are sons of butchers and sons of newsagents that work in this place as members of parliament on the Labor side. We know small business, we believe in small business and we'll support small business.

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