House debates Questions without Notice

Small Business

Monday, 12 October 2026 House of Representatives

Anne Aly

Anne Aly Cowan, Australian Labor Party, Minister for International Development

2:41 pm

As I was saying, it's all very well to talk about small businesses, to cosplay as small businesses, to make reels where you're pretending to be a small business, but actually going out and speaking to small businesses means that we have a government that acts in the interests of small businesses by making the instant asset write-off permanent, by making the two-year loss carry back permanent and by delivering assistance to small businesses where they need it most and when they need it most. Importantly, every time I go and speak to small businesses, whether it's in the member for Maranoa's seat, whether it's in Darwin, whether it's in rural and regional Australia or whether it's in the cities, the thing that they ask for the most is access to workers. That's why we have free TAFE. That's why we have apprenticeship schemes to enable those businesses to access the workers that they need.

Now, the Prime Minister went through some numbers earlier. I think they warrant repeating, because those numbers mean something. Those numbers—the more than 600,000 new businesses that have started—show record numbers of new businesses starting since we came into government. Those record numbers every day and every month demonstrate something. They demonstrate something beyond numbers. They demonstrate the initiative—

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