Tom Venning (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—Small business is under siege. There's no doubting that. I like to think of a society like a home. To build a society, you need foundations, and unfortunately those foundations are not sound in regional Australia right now, where our small businesses are absolutely under siege. Those foundations are access to health services, access to housing, access to child care and, importantly, access to the skills and training which feed small businesses.

This government talks about free TAFE. Well, come out to regional South Australia and look at what's happened to TAFE out there. You can get your boat licence at Coober Pedy, but you can't do anything in that local TAFE towards the local industry. It is absolutely ridiculous. It is all spin. We need to bring back technical skills to our regional TAFE centres to keep feeding in to our small businesses. Why is it that Labor does not care about small business? It's very clear: you cannot unionise small business. That is why small business is under siege and will always be under siege by this Labor Party. The Labor Party is run by unions and union bosses. You will not find that in small business.

Whether you're a farmer, a publican, a fencing contractor, a fisherman, a truckie or any of the other small business owners and workers that live in the electorate of Grey, you are absolutely struggling. Whether it is increased inflation and goods or the lack of skills, we are all under pressure. Earlier this year I wrote directly to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry about the absolute crisis facing our wineries. These are predominantly small family owner-operators who have poured generations of sweat into their vines, and right now they are drowning. They are drowning under immense commercial pressure. They are drowning under systematic regulatory failure, and they are drowning under the crushing weight of rising costs—pardon the pun! Where is this government support? It is completely absent. Labor has abandoned small and family business. They have ignored desperate calls for red tape relief. They've ignored the plea for simple regulation. They have failed entirely to provide a clear pathway to grow and employ Australians.

The opposition stands firmly with small and family businesses, the farmers of which I am one, the fishers, the viticulturists who back themselves. We are losing that ability to innovate and think for ourselves in this nation, even in our regional communities. Look at all the small tool shops and the small tackle shops getting overrun by centralised corporates coming out of our cities and taking our regional jobs and innovation. We stand for lower inflation, lower interest rates, lower taxes and taking the handcuffs off Australian enterprise.

In closing, small business is the backbone of Australia, and particularly regional Australia. If we support small businesses and family businesses, our society will prosper and grow once again. Right now, inflation is killing us. There is no real growth in our economy, particularly in our regional economies, and we need to focus on small business.

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