Leon Rebello (McPherson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the motion moved by the member for Goldstein because it is indeed a matter of the utmost public importance. Small and family businesses are doing it tough under this government. Across my community of McPherson, from cafes and pubs to local grocers, sole traders and manufacturers, it's becoming harder to operate and more costly just to keep the doors open.

When small business succeeds, Australia succeeds. Creating the conditions for enterprise to flourish is critically important to repairing our economy, driving real private-sector wage growth, reducing consumer costs and building a more prosperous nation. Those opposite fail to understand that when they make life harder for small business they make life harder for every Australian. Many Gold Coast businesses do everything they can to shield their customers, but they simply cannot absorb every new cost and every new regulation imposed by this government. Those costs inevitably flow through to consumers, compounding the cost-of-living crisis.

In Labor's last term, Anthony Albanese oversaw the worst rate of business insolvencies of any other prime minister since Federation. Let that sink in. During this period, Queensland recorded more than 4,500 insolvencies. Nationally, that figure was around 25,000, with businesses in the construction sector hit the hardest. What does that tell us? Construction is becoming less viable under this Labor government. Between union pressure, mounting red tape and higher operating costs, the sector is being strangled. As a result, Australia is falling behind in infrastructure, roads and housing.

Among the thousands of collapsed businesses are hardworking tradies—Australians who backed themselves, took a risk and set up their own business to contribute to building our country. Instead of supporting them, this government is doing everything it can to hinder their growth. Why would Labor want a thriving small-business construction sector? That would hardly suit the interests of their big-business-aligned union mates at the CFMEU. Instead, this government piles on 5,000 new regulations, hundreds of new laws and nearly 3,000 pages of construction codes—enough to drown small operators and keep aspirational builders firmly at bay. In doing so, Labor is directly tilting the balance away from ambition in enterprise and towards big-business monopolisation and union power.

The government abolished effective construction oversight, looked the other way as union militancy pushed up costs and drove down productivity, and then pretended it was all somebody else's fault. These decisions are not victimless. When projects are delayed or costs blow out, Australians pay the price. When the CFMEU's grip on residential construction inflates costs by 30 per cent, it's not just the developers who feel it; it's every family trying to build a home or every small business that's trying to fit-out a shopfront. These decisions drive up rents, price out first home buyers and deepen the housing crisis.

Productivity is down five per cent. Our competitiveness has slipped. The government should clear the path, not block it. Yet, under Labor, small and family businesses aren't treated as partners in prosperity. They're treated like an ATM for taxes, a test case for regulation, and are punished for creating jobs and supporting local communities.

Energy policy is no better. On the southern Gold Coast, businesses are doing it tough, and they're staring down higher power prices while ministers chase ideology over outcomes. The greatest cost increase for business under this government has been energy. Labor failed to grasp the basic economic understanding that when business costs rise so, too, do the costs for consumers. Their mismanagement of energy policy has driven power prices up by nearly 40 per cent, fuelling cost-of-living pressures for every Australian and every Australian business. Pick ideology over affordability and you get more insolvencies, fewer private sector jobs, lower productivity and a weaker economy, followed by higher government spending to clean up the mess. Labor's energy policies are fuelling inflation and fuelling the cost-of-living crisis.

That's why we in the coalition are committed to an energy policy focused on affordability whilst lowering emissions responsibly, at a pace that technology and the economy can sustain. We want to accelerate new supply, keep existing generation online and allow investment to flow where it delivers the lowest, most-reliable prices, because when you reduce the cost of energy you don't just lower household bills; you ease one of the largest expenses facing small businesses. When energy becomes affordable again, that relief will flow through to the entire economy.

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