Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this motion about small business. Ironically, I stood here a year ago—almost to the day—and I made a few predictions of what was to come for small business. It gives me no pleasure, because I know people out there are hurting—business people, small-and-medium-business people, are hurting—to once again stand here with those very predictions which have now come to pass. If you'll indulge me, Deputy Speaker Wilkie, I'll quote myself:

… the Labor-Green-teal government, is now the worst government on record for Australian businesses, having surpassed the 10,757 businesses collapsing under the government of 2011-12.

Well, that record's been broken again. Annual insolvencies have been rising steadily across all sectors since 2022, as ASIC data has shown.

A lot of members here—and I'm not having a go at them—have never been in business. A lot of people come into this chamber and speak about businesses, particularly small and medium businesses. But until you've sat in the seat, until you've run a business, employed people, filled out a BAS at one minute to 12 the night before it's due and then paid the people who work for you and gone home to the wife and said, 'We're a bit light on this week; we'll have to just tighten the belt'—until you've done that, you don't understand how hard it is to run a small business. Whether or not that's a farm—in my case it was three law practices—you're dealing with the everyday issues of running a small business and your cash flow. But then government comes into your life uninvited, with policies created by people who have no understanding of how they affect those little people. Small and medium businesses make up 98 per cent of our economy, and the people in the regions—the rural people, the regional people—quite often do the hard, heavy lifting for those in the cities.

You see policies on power or energy being brought into this place, sometimes by bureaucrats with no understanding and sometimes by well-intentioned members of parliament—I'll give you the example of the Heritage Hotel Motel Dorrigo, which celebrated its 100 years only last week. I went up and I spoke to Peter Feros; the hotel has been in the Feros family since they built it 100 years ago. Peter's now 82. In the last 18 months, his electricity bill has gone up $40,000. For a tiny little town at the top of the Great Dividing Range, looking down over the sea, where do they find that money? Where does Peter Feros have to go, and what does he have to cut to find that money? I'll tell you what he has to cut; he has to cut a staff member.

This is replicated all around Australia, whether it's in hospitality or in retail. What we need is good government intervention—not bad government intervention but policy that works. We just saw a roundtable—I predicted that the booklet was printed before we had the roundtable—and nothing will come out of it. It will have been a talkfest. I say, to this government and those people who are making the policies that are hurting our businesses and forcing them to close down, get out of the way or listen to the people on the ground. Listen to what they want; listen to what they need. Otherwise, in 12 months time, August 2026, I'll be standing here saying the same thing.

See this speech in context