Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

The Treasury Laws Amendment (Financial Reporting System Reform) Bill 2026 may, on one level, seem to many Australians to be a mundane piece of legislation, administrative in its nature. But, of course, sitting behind it is a much more significant purpose. Australian small businesses are struggling right now with increasing costs—regulations and industrial relations costs et cetera—across the entire economy.

The problem with this Labor government is they design all law on the basis that every small business, every corner store and every wonderful, hardworking Australian who wants to set up a home business has, sitting behind them, an HR department, a tax and legal department and a regulatory compliance department when, in fact, they don't. They just want to get on with their lives. They just want to grow their business, be successful and support themselves and their families.

Because of this mad approach to regulation and taxation, we've had record small-business insolvencies—41,000 since the Labor government was elected and just over 14,000 last year—and we are on track, in this financial year, to see record small-business insolvencies, in excess of last year. I would be embarrassed if I were part of a government that had overseen record small-business insolvencies. But we know the response from the federal minister; her accusation was that they were dodgy. We've seen all of those livelihoods taken away and a small-business minister who draws a tin ear to any concerns from small business.

One of the problems with the Labor government is that they are not satisfied with putting increased big-business IR law on small business, they're not satisfied with imposing big-business tax laws on small business, and they're not satisfied with imposing big-business regulation on small business. They now want to impose the climate accountability and climate disclosure standards that apply to big business onto small business.

There are two fundamental problems with this. The first problem is that, for a lot of these businesses, this type of regulation or disclosure is far beyond their capacity. It's not within their remit, both in terms of their core purpose and their function. They struggle enough as it is; they're drowning in regulation. The second problem is that there aren't the skills in the economy to provide it. So, of course, the cost structures of it would go dramatically up for small businesses, who are already struggling to keep a profit; there's already a small-business cost crisis in this nation. What's the response of the Labor government? It's, 'Well, we've got a small-business cost crisis in Australia right now, so let's just hit it with speed.' That's where we're currently going under this legislation

I congratulate the Shadow Assistant Treasurer for his efforts in the carriage of this bill, to get it to this point. He's highlighted dramatically the consequences of what will happen if it continues to go forward, how Australians and, particularly, Australian small businesses will be crushed by the consequences of it. Of course, it may seem simple. It may seem that abolishing the Financial Reporting Council, the Australian Accounting Standards Board and the Auditing and Assurance Standards Board and replacing them with a new body called External Reporting Australia may actually have some efficiency dividend. What we know—we've seen this consistently with this government—is that it leads to regulatory capture. They get a small number of people in these organisations and they just drive up the cost on small business, which continues to get hit hard. It doesn't deliver any environmental, social or climate benefit, but it does make sure that all those small businesses just teetering on the brink—with heart, sweat and tears and finances keeping them going—are sent to the wall. And that is what is so damaging and dangerous about this bill.

This is a bill designed to capture regulatory standards around ESG compliance and climate disclosure compliance and ram them down the throats of small businesses so they cannot stay alive. They will not be able to breathe, and they will not be in a situation where they'll have confidence in the future. For this government to do that, in an environment of record small-business insolvencies, is, to be frank, a kind of sickness. It also goes to the heart of this government's understanding of small business. They don't understand it. They don't understand what it means to back yourself, to take risks, to employ people and, more importantly, to be able to do it in an environment where there's already a cost-of-small-business crisis.

This morning, the Leader of the Opposition and I were out at a small business in Canberra, and we heard directly about how electricity bills have gone up 50 per cent and how industrial relations regulation has meant not that people are getting paid more, which was the Labor government's intention, but actually that fewer shifts are being offered, because there is no other way they can make ends meet. More importantly, the costs then get passed on to consumers.

So what are consumers doing? They're consuming less. In fact, I hear more and more stories about mums that go to the self-checkout line at a supermarket because they look at what's in their basket and they're afraid it's going to get to a total that they can't afford. If they go to the self-checkout line, they'll be able to return the products without the feeling of humiliation or judgement from the person at the cashier.

This is not a dignified country when we behave in this way. This is not a dignified protection of our way of life, or restoring our way of life, under this government; it's quite the reverse. It's a complete trashing of the Australian way of life. The only answer that this government has is to impose more costs, more burdens and more regulations on small businesses and drive them further to the wall.

This bill might seem anodyne to a lot of the members, who wax lyrical about harmonisation of standards and doing something good for the planet, but I can tell you what it comes at the consequence of: it comes at the consequence of thousands of Australians whose small businesses will be taken from the marginal line of profitability to insolvency. That's why we had record small-business insolvencies last year and that's why, tragically, we're going to have record insolvencies in the year to come. With that is going to be a decline in the standard of living for many Australians, but, secretly, I think that's what this Labor government wants.

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