Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Ryan for his question and acknowledge his experience as a Brisbane city councillor—indeed, as the Treasurer of the Brisbane City Council. In his electorate, 60,000 taxpayers are getting a tax cut as a result of policies that we on this side of the House have supported.

In every electorate represented across this chamber, small businesses are the lifeblood of local communities. They are also the engine room of local economies, with 3.6 million small businesses across Australia employing eight million Australians. That's more than half the workforce being supported by small businesses. We have supported small businesses throughout this crisis, whether through JobKeeper, the cash flow boost or the most recent business support payments in those states that went into lockdown. Today, we released new Treasury analysis and ATO data that showed, as a result of the tax cuts that we on this side of the House have supported, small businesses are getting $5 billion of tax relief this year and next. So, if you're a small business with a $500,000 turnover, you're going to be around $50,000 better off. What is also important to acknowledge in this new data is that small and medium-sized businesses created 600,000 jobs between April last year and September this year. That's 1,300 jobs a day being created by small business.

You would think with that track record of creating jobs and supporting economic activity that those opposite would support small business. But we know that the only thing that they've got for small business is a sledgehammer—higher taxes for small businesses. We know that the member for Rankin recently took to his shadow cabinet a plan to put a new tax on family small businesses. What would that do? It would put a tax on 300,000 small businesses. So a mum-and-dad cafe that earns $150,000 a year will pay an extra $14,000 of tax as a result of Labor's higher taxes on small business. So, while we're supporting small businesses with JobKeeper, the cashflow boost and other COVID support payments, those opposite want to put a higher tax on small businesses.

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