Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week I had the opportunity to participate in Pollies for Small Business, a great initiative. I worked teaching at Hills Grammar School—one of my old schools—and as a print worker at Colonial Print and Copy in Baulkham Hills. I also doorknocked businesses on the corner of Windsor Road and Old Northern Road. These businesses are being ignored by the state agency Roads and Traffic Authority. I have to say the lack of consultation about changes that are severely impacting their businesses is breathtaking. Small business is the engine room of our economy. There are 14,126 small businesses in Mitchell, all of which play a vital role in our local economy. I am proud to stand up for them in this place. We do need to do more to make it easier to own and operate a small business, but we also need to make it easier for people to get into small business. The Labor government’s recent axing of funding for programs such as Commercial Ready and Building Entrepreneurship has certainly not made it easier for small business. With higher petrol prices and the collapse of consumer confidence in recent times, we ought to have small business and small business operators very much in the spotlight of policy making at the moment.

In addition to these businesses I visited on the Pollies for Small Business program, I want to recognise those small businesses that recently won awards at the Hills Shire Times True Local Business Awards night, which I attended recently. These are great local businesses: Karin Murton Hair Design at Northmead, Bakers Delight North West, Sparks Shoes at North Rocks, Robert Cliff Master Jewellers, Spoilt Rotten Doggy Boutique at Castle Hill, Eurolounge restaurant and bar, Hillside Hotel at Castle Hill, Louis Carr Real Estate, Power Ford at Baulkham Hills, Norwest Child Care Centre, Hills Swimming at Kenthurst, Dural Flower Farm Florist and Tom’s Family Butchery at Annangrove. I want to applaud and congratulate in particular these award winners for their fine products and services and for achieving so highly in each of their categories. It was so pleasing on the night to see the truth of industrial relations in this country. The truth of industrial relations in this country is that we have employers and employees working in partnership to produce great results most of the time. You can see this when you attend awards nights like that one and you see all of the employees and the employer celebrating the fine achievements that have come from such close cooperation and work.

It was great to be involved in the first national Pollies for Small Business program. The contribution of small businesses to the community is sometimes underestimated, and I enjoyed immensely the opportunity to raise the profile of small businesses in Mitchell. I will be working in this place to ensure that small business is in the spotlight of policy making in the coming years, especially with the collapse of consumer confidence and the tough times that small businesses are facing at the moment.