Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Small Business. Will the minister update the House on the reaction to the government's budget from small business? How is the budget helping small business to invest and grow?

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is great to get a question from the member for Brisbane. Her electorate is the home of more than 30,000 small business family enterprises and hundreds and hundreds of Tony's tradies as well. Congratulations! It is great to get a question from her. She was also very kind to host a meeting with women of entrepreneurship, which was a spectacular insight into the diversity, particularly of women. Some are starting their businesses from home; some are growing very large businesses. It was a great example of what is happening and how we can support enterprise by energising enterprise.

You only need to look at the newspapers, or, as our colleagues have done, talk with small businesses over the weekend. At the Stonecats Frankston YCW Football Club President's luncheon—what a great occasion that was—I was representing you, Prime Minister; we would have had an even bigger crowd there. Gerard Wintle was there talking about the interest he has had from those in the printing industry.

Mr Butler interjecting—

I do not know why the member for Port Adelaide is having a go at me. I am happy to call you an acronym. I know the President of the United States is POTUS. You can be POLP—President of the Labor Party. I do not know why you are getting cranky with me.

We were hearing a lot of good news about our $5.5 billion jobs and small business package. It is making such a difference. We saw today in The Age another example of not just how small businesses are benefiting but also how businesses supplying and supporting small businesses are benefiting. We have Mark Beitz, the dealer principal, at Bartons in Queensland quoted in a Fairfax story today as saying that the $20,000 immediate deduction is:

… really triggering an avalanche, especially now the legislation has been passed and people have confidence they can get the tax benefit in the current financial year.

Mr Albanese interjecting—

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Pause before you breathe again.

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He went on to say:

There's been a rush of tradies—

Tony's tradies—

buying single cab utes and an uplift in second hand light commercial vehicles.

This is fantastic. We are seeing businesses right across our country taking steps to support the growth of their businesses and helping this nation recover many of the 519,000 jobs lost in small business under Labor. But this is not some kind of one-off Hollywood feature. It is not even a miniseries, and we know how popular miniseries can be. This is as predictable as the nightly news.

We are working as hard for small business every day looking for new policy opportunities—our conviction to get behind those enterprising men and women. This week—hopefully, later today—the Senate will pass our repair and reform of employee share schemes legislation. We have to fix what Labor damaged when in office. This week we will be introducing the unincorporated tax cut for those two-thirds of small businesses that the Leader of the Opposition forgot about in his budget-in-reply speech. We will also be implementing legislation to extend unfair contract terms protections currently available to consumers to small businesses. This is all about energising enterprise and showing that we are working as hard every day for small business men and women as they are. (Time expired)