Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the previous speaker, the previous Chief Government Whip, for her outstanding contribution in this debate. The opposition will be supporting this bill because the bill implements a number of sensible measures that the coalition government examined—and pushed for—in its previous life. The bill provides effective changes to support small businesses in handling their affairs with the ATO, providing them with additional supports in the event of inadvertent breachers. That's very important. Before coming into this place, I was a builder by trade, a carpenter by trade. I then owned a building business, and then I became a barrister. So I spent 30 years in a small business before coming to this place, and I've always said, 'Wouldn't it be great, wouldn't this place look a bit different if everyone had to spend time working in small business, if everyone had to understand the trials and tribulations of actually employing people and working their way around how to pay people on awards and, quite frankly, sweating blood on a Wednesday night trying to figure out how they're going to make payroll tomorrow.' I've often told people who have spoken to me about their desire to come into this place, 'In my view, you will be a lesser parliamentarian if you come into this place without having endured those trials and tribulations.'

This bill does a number of things, and I'll touch on them in due course, but one of them is that, in schedule 1, if the commissioner is of the view that an entity has failed to comply with their tax obligations, specifically in relation to recordkeeping, then, rather than ping them, the commissioner can require that person to undertake a course. Schedule 1 actually reminds me of when I was a young fellow sitting for my builder's licence and I had to go and do all these various courses. I would have been about in my early 20s at the time—

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