I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Goldstein from introducing the Taxation Administration Amendment (Reinstating Credit Card Payments) Bill 2026 immediately.

We have a farce at the heart of this country right now where the government does not know in what direction it is heading. It turns around and says to the Australian community that it's going to introduce a credit card surcharge ban. We then have a real and human impact, particularly for those who own small businesses, who say there's a cost to them. We have travel agents highlighting the huge cost and the disruption it is going to cause to their small businesses. We have independent schools saying they can no longer accept credit card payments as a consequence of the government's decision. Childcare operators are following suit. And the government's response at every point is to turn around and tell the small businesses of this country: 'You must absorb this cost. You have to take on higher costs at a time of declining profitability, record insolvencies and record numbers of small businesses closing the door.' There is no empathy from this government. They have no interest in the impact their decisions are having on the small-business community of the nation. I'm going to come back to that, Speaker—because it's not a prop. It's called a copy of the Australian Financial Review, and it shows the cascading series of errors that have flowed.

What is even more extraordinary, now that we know exactly what the impact of the government's surcharge ban is, is that there is absolutely no clarity from the government about what is going to happen next. And then the Australian Taxation Office comes along and says: 'Hold our surcharge beer. We are going to introduce a ban on credit cards for Australians who pay their tax liabilities that way'—as is lawful and as many Australians, particularly small businesses, currently do to manage temporary issues around cash flow and as a form of interest-free overdraft. It applies particularly to the tradies, the sparkies and the chippies of the nation.

An opposition member: Plumbers.

And plumbers. The Australian Taxation Office says: 'We're not going to absorb this additional cost that the government is expecting from hundreds of thousands of small businesses across the country. We're not going to do that, so we're just going to ban the payment method.' And they did it with eight hours notice. I do not know if I have ever seen a government decision that has been so incompetently administered as this credit card ban by the ATO.

But wait! You just needed to wait and see how the government responded. At first, everyone was backing it. The member for Parramatta was saying: 'No, we support the government's decision. We'd back it in 100 per cent of the way, and the ATO's right on this.' Then, all of a sudden, I think it was the Minister for Housing who turned around and said: 'Actually, we're quite concerned about this. This isn't going to end well.' Maybe she was hearing from some of the chippies who help build houses or finish them. She claims she had a background in small business, so she had some appreciation of this mysterious thing for the Albanese government that they call cash flow. Then, of course, we had—we've had so many different ones!—the Minister for Small Business. When she finally figured out there was a surcharge ban—trust me, we'll return to that one, too—and there was this credit card ban implemented, she also raised some concerns.

But don't worry. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, when she was asked about it, said, 'We'd like to do something, but we don't have the power.'