It's always a pleasure to stand up and talk about small businesses and the farming sector—communities that I represent in the great electorate of Eden-Monaro.

Our government is backing small businesses across the country. We're delivering $3.8 billion in new measures that lower taxes for businesses, including making the $20,000 instant asset write-off permanent. It had become a bit of a thing in the Senate that those opposite would stall the passing of the instant asset write-off each and every year so that small businesses would be left hanging, wondering whether it was going to happen for the next financial year. So we've made that permanent in our budget. Around 300,000 small businesses claimed that instant asset write-off in the 2024-25 financial year. They used it to invest in tools, in technology and in equipment that they need to grow. And we're introducing a permanent two-year loss carry back to support cash flow investment and resilience.

We're also cutting $10.2 billion a year in regulatory costs across the economy, because small-business owners should be able to spend more time building their businesses and less time dealing with the unnecessary red tape. Our government is backing those 2.7 million small businesses with the certainty and the support that they need to invest, to grow and to create more jobs across our country. That's why reducing that regulatory burden is so important. Modernising outdated requirements and delivering a reduction is something that is incredibly important to us—reducing that regulatory burden. Because when small businesses do invest, we know that they create jobs across the whole economy, and the country benefits.

How do I know this? Because I'm a small-business owner. My husband runs a small business. My parents ran a small business.