Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Jobs, Industrial Relations and Women. Will the minister update the House on how the government is delivering for small and family businesses? What are the risks? And what is at stake for small businesses from a different approach?

Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party, Minister for Jobs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for La Trobe for his question and I want to congratulate him on the incredible work he's doing on behalf of the more than 16,000 small businesses in his electorate of La Trobe. I had the great privilege of being able to be with him only last week to meet a very entrepreneurial young couple, Sophie and her husband, David, who set about creating their own business, the Five Sparrows cafe in Berwick. This is a business that they have had to sacrifice for, borrow money for and, of course, work incredibly hard for, creating their own employment opportunity and an employment opportunity for around 16 fellow Australians, and that's not to mention all of the small and medium sized businesses that, in fact, supply their business.

Sophie and David's story is the story of so many entrepreneurial Australians. On this side of the chamber we are proud to be able to back small, medium- and family-sized enterprises right across our nation, because we know that they play a critical role not only in providing the goods and services that their communities want and expect but also in providing the millions of jobs that Australians rely on—more than seven million jobs at last count. We're proud to be able to bring forward a tax cut for small, medium- and family-sized enterprises—it will apply to around three million businesses—because of our strong economic plan and our longstanding commitment to lower taxes on this side of the chamber. We know that small- and medium-sized enterprises are the engine room of the economy and the creators of employment. They can continue to create jobs when they have certainty and they can continue to keep their costs down.

Of course, those opposite have got a very different plan. They would see small and family-sized enterprises around the country face more of what they absolutely do not like: higher bills. They would be slugged with higher electricity bills. They would be stuck with footing the bill for union sweetheart deals and for the damage that militant unions would cause to productivity right across the country, sending industrial relations back to the Dark Ages. Make no mistake: under Labor, they will face higher electricity bills because all we will see from those opposite is higher bills—bills that drain motivation, bills that sap productivity and bills that have a nasty habit of blowing a hole in the budget.