Simon Kennedy (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. At the end of last year, I held a small business forum in Caringbah. I met dozens of small-business owners struggling to make ends meet. There are now vacant shops there. Behind each shop is a family and a person who has lost it all. This morning in Canberra, I spoke to a gentleman from there who has lost his house in one of these insolvent businesses. We hear this number of these thousands of businesses. I spoke to one of those people today, and that is the face of Jim Chalmers's economic failure.

These small businesses employ 70 per cent of Australia. Seventy per cent of Australia is in small and medium enterprises. They make up almost 98 per cent of all businesses, and they are on their knees. There are around 2.6 million of them operating in Australia, and most of them are micro, with zero to four employees. They've got families that surround them, and they are falling over, with 14,722 collapsing—a 33 per cent increase—in the prior year. Their mortgages are going up, and their loans are going up.

Today in question time we heard Treasurer Chalmers be a little bit tricky. Yes, it comes quite naturally to him. We asked him about government spending time and time again. Listen closely to how he answered. He came back and spoke about public demand. He talked about public demand coming off, and that was quite deliberate, because government spending is more than public demand; it shows up in private demand. Public demand does not include energy rebates. It does not include Centrelink. It does not include pensions. He likes to talk about public demand because it obscures the fact that government spending is at a 40-year high, at 27 per cent of GDP. It has never, ever been a higher share of the economy than this year. The only year it might be at risk of being higher than this year is next year.

So what does the Treasurer do? Instead of admitting that, he goes into clever little tricky weasel words and talks about private demand and public demand. He says public demand is coming off. Well, that ignores the electricity rebates. It ignores Centrelink transfers. It ignores all these other transfers where payments are at an all-time high. So, Treasurer, why are you misleading the Australian people? Why are you putting these small businesses under pressure? You're putting mortgages out of reach for Australian people, rents out of reach for Australian people and small businesses under pressure.

These small-business owners were recently surveyed, and it showed a large proportion of them are dealing with lower profits—64 per cent. That is, almost two-thirds of small business have their profits down year on year. Two-thirds—that is amazing. Sixty per cent of these businesses are not paying themselves and not declaring dividends, and 72 per cent said rising costs were their biggest obstacle to growth. These small businesses aren't just numbers; they play essential roles in our community. The record closure rates—these rising insolvencies—are not a normal part of the cycle; they're a symptom of mounting cost pressures. In the developed world, Australia has had the shortest cycle of easing to now hiking rates. It's the shortest cycle ever on record for the Reserve Bank of Australia, underpinned by record government spending. The housing crisis is getting worse. The small-business collapse is getting worse.

For the Minister for Small Business to insinuate they are dodgy, in this environment—why isn't the Minister for Small Business here? She should come back into the House, withdraw those shameful comments and apologise not just to the House but to all these hardworking small-business owners in the seat of Cook and right across Australia. If the Minister for Small Business won't do it, the Prime Minister should come and do it. It is 64 per cent of these people with their profits down year on year, 60 per cent not paying themselves, 60 per cent explaining to their family why they are poorer, why they may risk and lose their house—if a minister can smear tens of thousands of Australians and refuse to correct the record, what does that say about standards in this House?

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