House debates

Monday, 9 November 2020

Bills

Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021; Consideration in Detail

1:11 pm

Photo of James StevensJames Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It was my pleasure, in the second reading debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021, to make some comment about the response to the budget as I was able to go and meet with businesses, particularly, in my electorate in the week or two post the budget being delivered by the Treasurer and the measures being understood, absorbed and communicated throughout my community. I just want to briefly make it clear that business sentiment in my electorate, and in the whole state of South Australia, has only increased since then, in the last few weeks.

Last week we had a very reputable business confidence survey in South Australia released that showed the largest increase in business confidence in the history of that polling process, that market research, which is conducted by BankSA, which is obviously a significant financial institution in South Australia. The business community in my electorate and my home state has responded so overwhelmingly positively towards the measures in this bill. In particular, I have to say that it so enjoyable to hear stories from businesses who are now saying, 'I am proactively making investment decisions that I would not have made if it weren't for the measures in the budget that are making a huge difference,' particularly the instant asset write-off, the uncapped write-off, which has led so many businesses to have the confidence to go out and incur expenditure. They know, of course, they'll be able to immediately write off the value of those eligible assets. That makes it a huge incentive to bring expenditure forward.

The tax clawback measures as well, mean businesses are going to be receiving cash flow they hadn't anticipated much sooner, by applying current accumulated tax losses to a previous period instead of a future period. It's these sorts of things that are going to lead—as they already have and will continue to, in my view—to an unlocking of business investment that is going to be a key driver for bringing us out of the economic challenges that have been thrust upon us because of this coronavirus pandemic. In fact, some of the statistics we're seeing in my home state are showing that, in some sectors, we're seeing a dramatic improvement on this commensurate period last year, before the pandemic challenges confronted us economically.

The budget has been extremely well received by small businesses in my electorate but also more generally in my community. There is a strong sense from the people that I speak to in my electorate that we are saying to the private sector, 'We want you to create the jobs that we need to bring us out of the struggles that we've had and make us, in fact, more prosperous and stronger than we were before we went into this challenge in March.' What we've done is say to the private sector, 'We want to back you, to give you confidence to make decisions, to give you incentives to make decisions, particularly significant investment decisions. We want to help you employ people.' The incentives to employ someone who is currently on JobSeeker and under the age of 35 are really important, because we can never forget that traditionally it is younger people, who go onto the employment queues very quickly, who can take the longest to come off them, and, whether it's fair or not, there is at times some stigma from employers towards people in this category. So the incentive payments that we've announced for businesses that employ people off the JobSeeker roles in that category, I think, is completely commendable, and I look forward to seeing the evidence of the success of that. It will make a huge difference in making sure we don't have engendered youth unemployment for a long period of time, which was certainly the case as we came out of the early 1990s Keating recession.

As someone who takes a keen interest in electoral matters, and being a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, I'm pleased to see we're putting some important resources towards the Australian Electoral Commission, the AEC. We've been asked to consider what challenges they may confront if we have to conduct a future federal election where some of the current challenges such as social distancing and community restrictions are still in place. It may be that, by the time we go to the next election, we need to provision for that. So I would like to ask the minister a few questions on the main finance portfolio budget measure that provided $96.7 million to the Australian Electoral Commission for ICT upgrades. Can the minister representing the finance minister please explain what kinds of projects will be included in this upgrade, how has the COVID pandemic impacted election staffing and other election logistics challenges, and how will new IT tools provide an improvement on the present methods for managing collection operations?

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