Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) acknowledges 2.5 million small businesses have been abandoned by the Government;

(2) notes the Government has:

(a) achieved a record number of small business insolvencies this financial year;

(b) done nothing to create an environment for small businesses to thrive; and

(c) made it more difficult than ever to do business in Australia; and

(3) calls on the Government to prioritise the problems facing small businesses by:

(a) removing excessive regulation it insists on applying to small business;

(b) scrapping its plans to impose a family savings tax on unrealised capital gains; and

(c) backing small business to make it easier to employ Australians.

Deputy Speaker Scrymgour, firstly, congratulations on your elevation to office. When I think about the challenges small businesses face around Australia today, I think about how they start their day—people getting up with initiative and backing themselves; driving themselves to work, watching the petrol meter and wondering whether they're going to get themselves through and whether they're going to top up their fuel today or tomorrow because of the challenges of meeting the costs they confront; and getting into their shop, to their home family office or into some sort of warehouse they've converted to be the base for their stock and whether they're going to be able to pay for their wages and for the salaries for the people they employ. Every day in this country, small businesses face real and significant challenges to meet the stresses and to be able to back themselves and get ahead. They don't ask much of government; all they ask is that the government backs them to be able to get ahead and do the work that they need to do.

The challenge, since the election of the Albanese government, since 2022, is we have seen a consistent decline in the number of small businesses in this country. More disturbingly, we have seen record small-business insolvencies in this nation right now, and we are facing a crisis for small businesses where nothing is going their way as a conscious decision of this government, whether it is the realities of rising energy prices that fall on deaf ears directly because of the consequences of the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, whether it is the reality of the rising taxes at both a state and federal level or, of course, whether it is the realities that people are experiencing because of the complicated nature of industrial relations laws. When industry does simple things, like try to look at pathways to actually pay their workers more or to get simplicity in the system so that they don't have to build out a HR department for a local milk bar or a small business that has two employees, the government's only solution is to slap them down and to make it clear that there is no pathway to simplicity in industrial relations laws without the backing of a union official to come and bully them in their workplace.

This is the lived reality of so many small businesses in this nation today, and that is why we need serious change—because we have a problem, when I go and talk to small businesses, where there is a lack of aggregate demand and confidence amongst consumers to go in and spend with confidence. When they don't do that, consumers go and, of course, focus directly on the major supermarket chains where they need the bare necessities rather than on discretionary spending. As a consequence, small businesses suffer real and challenging realities around their cash flow, and they're just struggling to make ends meet. In addition to the financial pressure of how they're going to meet their expenditure today, so often—Deputy Speaker, as I hope you know—it is backed by the security of the mortgage often of their own home.

But, even worse than that, so many small businesses in this country are not just the source of an income for small businesses today; they are also the basis of retirement security for tomorrow. When this Labor government puts forward a new tax that Australians simply did not vote—a family savings tax on unrealised capital gains that will directly attack and assault the assets that small businesses have put in their superannuation not just for security but as the basis for their confidence for their retirement in the long run, just as farmers have done and just as families have done—it means we now face a crisis where Australians no longer know where to turn or how to plan for their future. This family savings tax on unrealised capital gains is not just an attack on the well heeled, as the Labor Party would like to make it out to be; it is a direct assault on small businesses and those who are backing themselves to get ahead. More than anything now, we need confidence for the small businesses of this nation, and it comes from Canberra saying, 'We understand and will either get out of your way or back you every step of the way, because you are the employers of this country and the foundation of our economic success.'

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