Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to rise in this place this morning to talk about the small business survey I recently undertook with the 7,000-odd small businesses in my electorate of Mayo. Mayo has a very large small business base. It does not have a whole lot of large businesses but is a very typical Australian situation,  with many small businesses, largely family based small businesses, employing a vast number of people who live in my electorate. The results were very telling and very worrying. I am sure members will join me in being concerned about the concern out there in the small business community about the way the Rudd Labor government is managing the economy and the impact it is having, particularly on small business, their prospects and their opportunities to employ more Australians.

I thought it was worth while mentioning some of the comments being made, particularly in relation to the increase in government regulation by both the Rudd Labor government and the Rann state Labor government. The combination of the two is causing so much damage to the small business communities in my electorate and, I am sure, more broadly. For instance, Alan Mayne, a local cherry producer in the Adelaide Hills, complained in his comments about the reduced flexibility and increased costs under Labor’s new modern awards implemented by the Deputy Prime Minister. Another from an owner of two small businesses in Hahndorf said:

Labor’s red tape is destroying small businesses, especially in the hospitality industry.

Sippy Furtado, owner of Ginger and Spice Cafe, said:

There should be more rights and flexibility for employers—

and less union interference, which of course has increased with more power given to the unions under Labor’s Fair Work Act. Hilary Spacey of Middleton, down on the south coast, said it is:

… impossible for small business operators to comply with the [huge] loading—

imposed by Labor’s new general award. And Bronte Chapman of Mount Barker, a well-known small-business person in that area, said that ‘there is too much red tape and regulation’ and that this regulation is killing small business—in particular, the reintroduction of Labor’s unfair dismissal laws.

These are a small sample of the countless examples provided in the feedback in the small business survey. I was overwhelmed by the number of small business people who responded to the survey. It is a genuine indication of the level of concern in the community about Rudd Labor’s policies in relation to small business. Of course it will be a very different story when Tony Abbott, the member for Warringah, the Leader of the Opposition, is elected to government in the next three months because we, of course, are the best friends of small business in this country.