Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

If you want to understand the state of the economy right now, to grasp the pressures Australians are facing, you don't need to get a Treasury briefing or to wait for the CPI data. You just need to walk through our local streets. You'll see the 'vacant' or 'for lease' signs on properties or the words 'going out of business sale'. Across my community, from Berowra to Cherrybrook and from Hornsby to Epping—and, indeed, across Australia—small businesses are hurting.

I think of the local nursery owner who wrote to me outlining how inflation has hit their family-run nursery, a business that's operated successfully in my community for 33 years. They asked, 'Why is the government stifling us?' Theirs costs—fuel, electricity, machinery—have all continued to climb, rising faster than the business can adjust for. Compliance and employment red tape is chewing up more time and more money. Despite continued demand for their products, staff have had to be cut, equipment sold and payment plans negotiated with the ATO just so they can stay afloat. Unfortunately, their story's not an isolated situation. It's a pattern being repeated across the Berowra electorate and right across the country.

This is the legacy of the Albanese government. It's turning once proud, thriving small businesses into case studies on how a government's poor economic management and policy indifference break confidence and punish success. The 2½ million small businesses across Australia aren't just numbers. They're our butchers, our bakers, our family-run mechanics, our after-school tutoring centres and our local tradies. They employ our neighbours and sponsor our local sporting clubs. They give young people their first jobs. Under Labor they've been left behind. Last year we saw a record number of small-business insolvencies, and this year has been no better. Since coming to government, Labor have made it harder to run a small business. They've created uncertainty through their industrial relations laws, and they've done nothing to shield small businesses from skyrocketing energy prices. Now they're floating a tax on unrealised capital gains, a policy which will hit mum-and-dad investors and small-business owners alike.

A misguided tax on unrealised gains in superannuation isn't just bad policy. It's fundamentally unfair and unprincipled. The small-business owners with self-managed superannuation funds will be caught in the crossfire. This fails every good test of tax policy. It isn't simple, it isn't fair and it certainly isn't low. It's a tax on ambition and aspiration. It's an attack on the idea that people shouldn't be punished for saving for their future.

This, sadly, is part of a broader pattern. We hear talk of reform from this government, but what we get is more taxes and more regulation. In its first term, Labor added over 5,000 new regulations. Productivity flatlined and business investment fell. Australian households are going backwards. The economy grew by just 0.2 per cent in the March quarter, and our real GDP growth per capita has plunged Australia from being 20th to being 60th in just one year. These aren't abstract numbers. They reflect the real worsening pressures on small businesses and families.

The Treasurer's Press Club speech was an admission of how much damage this government has done to the economy in its first term and how much work is now needed to get it growing again. The coalition supports efforts to hold an economic roundtable, and we genuinely hope good ideas emerge from that. We want our small businesses to thrive once again. We want to see life brought back to our town centres and local villages.

But let's be very clear. This won't be achieved by more meetings. We need reform, and that means the removal of the excessive regulation that is strangling our small businesses. While the Treasurer says he's not ruling anything out, he's already taken industry relations off the table. The Prime Minister's also ruled out revisiting the GST. If Labor isn't willing to have an honest conversation about productivity and efficiency, this process risks being nothing more than a talkfest. A serious conversation about tax reform and productivity means that nothing should be ruled out for discussion. We're deeply concerned that what Labor is actually doing is laying the groundwork for more tax and more union control over Australian workplaces.

Let's be clear. This roundtable cannot be used as an attempt for higher taxes. That's the last thing small businesses need in the middle of a productivity crisis. We on this side of the House will always back small businesses, and we'll hold those opposite accountable for turning their back on them. This is why the shadow Treasurer is going to the government's roundtable, and it's why the shadow minister for productivity, Andrew Bragg, is seeking to establish a bipartisan Senate inquiry into Australia's lagging productivity. If the government is serious about growth, it should welcome the accountability and ambition such an inquiry would bring.

In the meantime, we will keep doing what the coalition have always done best, which is standing up for the 2½ million small businesses—the people who take risks, the people who create jobs and the people who give back and build the local communities that I am lucky to represent. I know the small-business owners of the Berowra electorate. They are resilient. What they need now is for the government to back them in, not to hold them back.

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