Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1)      condemns the Government for presiding over the insolvency of 41,749 small businesses since being elected;

(2)      notes that:

(a)         2025 was the worst calendar year for business insolvencies since records began in 1999, with more than 14,649 businesses collapsing; and

(b)         this Prime Minister now has the worst record of any Prime Minister for business insolvencies with an average of 2,938 businesses going under each quarter;

(3)      further condemns the Government for its failure to recognise the scale of the small business crisis and its lack of urgency in responding to record insolvencies;

(4)      acknowledges that behind every insolvency statistic is a family, an employee and a local community bearing the cost of the Government's policy failures; and

(5)      calls on the Minister for Small Business to urgently review the Government's policy settings that are focused on increasing costs, complexity and uncertainty for small and family businesses.

Small business, family business, sole traders and the self-employed are the backbone of the Australian economy. They're more than just that, though. They are the people who stand up and back themselves to be able to get ahead to support themselves and their families. They are the employers of the nation. They are the people who take risks and who should enjoy the reward and responsibility that comes with those risks. But we know very well that things are not alright in the land of small business. Under the Albanese government, we have seen the highest number of small business insolvencies on record. We have seen 41,000 small businesses go insolvent under the Albanese government. Last year, we had the highest number of small business insolvencies in Australia's history on record. Never have more small businesses collapsed than under this government, and it's pretty clear the reason why.

We have a cost of small business crisis in this country. We've had recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics which clearly shows that, as a consequence of government spending, inflation is out of control. So many small businesses rely on loans to be able to manage their liquidity or to buy assets, and interest rates are going up. A lot of them depend on non-bank lenders, so they pay a higher rate because they have a lower level of security; therefore, they are doubly impacted every time inflation persists and interest rates go up. But it's not just that they deal with the consequences of state taxes. Increasingly, state taxes are indexed against inflation. So when inflation goes up, their tax bill goes up as well—in addition to the problems of industrial relations, inflation that this government has legislated. And make no mistake, this government has put in a series of measures over the past three years which are still going through our industrial relations landscape, which are making it more expensive, more complex and harder to employ Australians. So if you've got a growing small business, you'll be finding it harder to employ the people you need to be successful and you'll have to pay a higher price. And every single one of these costs is not picked up by some small business owner; it has to be passed on to the consumer. And while large businesses enjoy the benefits of scale and can defray these costs across millions of items, small businesses get exposed at the pinch point of the Australian economy, and they're the ones most likely to feel the consequences and, tragically, as we know, have collapsed.

Now, when we confronted the minister about this only last week in the parliament, she said that maybe those businesses were 'dodgy'. That is the level of empathy from this government towards people who have lost their livelihoods—you're a bit 'dodgy'. That's the attitude of the Albanese government and the Minister for Small Business—no empathy, no concern. But what they did want to do was cover their tracks, because once she was caught out with her interjection in accusing businesses that had collapsed of being 'dodgy', she gave the middle finger, frankly, to millions of Australians who have backed themselves and who now know they can't rely on their government.

We need to make change in this country because we have, of a program that has been introduced by this government, only one-fifth or thereabouts of the total funding being accessed, because small businesses don't need more bureaucracy; small businesses need a lifeline of support, and they are being choked by the Albanese government because of inflation, interest rates and higher costs. What we need now more than ever are small business, family business, sole traders and the self-employed having the back of their government.

We in this parliament need to stand up for small business, family business, sole traders and the self-employed and back them in because they are the employers of the nation. We need to stand with small businesses and stand up for their right to be successful and to prosper. They have a right to their profitability and we need to encourage them to pursue it, because the next generation of Australians are going to grow their wealth and their economic opportunity by backing themselves. The consequence, if we do that, will be a thriving economy made up of those people who chance their hand, take a risk and back themselves. The consequence if we don't do that is what we are living with right now: rising costs, businesses collapsing—and, with them, private jobs—and a private-sector employment crisis.

Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Ben Small (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Julie-Ann Campbell (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank the member for Goldstein for giving me the opportunity to talk about small businesses and the supports that they would be deprived of if those opposite were sitting on the government benches. The member for Goldstein said that we need to back small business, and that's right. We need to back small business. But the opposition does not back small business. They didn't back small business when they voted against tax cuts. They didn't back small business when they didn't back in the instant asset write-offs. And they didn't back small business when it came to making sure that we're investing more towards innovation.

In my seat of Moreton, on Brisbane's south side, we have so many small businesses. Whether you're brewing the state's No. 1 beer at Slipstream in Yeerongpilly, whether you're manufacturing gaskets at Queensland Gaskets in Salisbury, whether you're serving up—this is a controversial one—the best char siu in the country at Burlington BBQ in Sunnybank or whether you're medevacing people home if you work at Retrieval Medics International—it doesn't matter which of those businesses you talk to, one thing is clear every time. Small businesses want the same things. They want stability and they want certainty. They want those things so that they can plan for the future. They want those things so that they can invest in innovation to make business more productive. And they want those things so that they can employ Australians, Queenslanders and people from my local community.

What we've seen over the past few months, the past few days and for a long time now is an opposition that has nothing stable and nothing certain about it. The on-off-on-off relationship between the Liberals and the Nationals has been tumultuous to say the least. The 'will they, won't they' that continues—week on, week off—is not just unedifying, it's downright disappointing. It's disappointing because this is serious. It's not a sitcom. It's not a game. Australians and Australian small businesses deserve better than the spotlight being not on them but on the coalition.

If they really cared about small business, they wouldn't have opposed those tax cuts that are benefiting 1.5 million sole traders, and they wouldn't have called those tax cuts 'a cruel hoax'. They wouldn't have opposed energy bill relief for millions of small businesses across this country. They wouldn't have called our fee-free TAFE measures 'wasteful spending'. If those opposite sat on this side of the chamber, hundreds of thousands of new tradies would not be working for small trade businesses as they are today. Worse, they would have been denied the opportunity to start small businesses of their own.

On this side of the House we don't just talk about ourselves; we talk about taking action. Under the Albanese Labor government, we've invested $2 billion in targeted supports for small business. We extended the instant asset write-off. We delivered the first-of-its-kind National Small Business Strategy. We invested $33.4 million to improve payment times, ensuring small businesses are paid what they are owed sooner. We're extending unfair trading practice protections to small businesses, making their engagement with large business fairer. We're investing $80 million to help businesses adopt new digital technologies and boost their cyber-resilience. Small businesses are eligible for the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, helping them save even more on their energy bills. And let us not forget that it was this government that reopened global markets, allowing our local producers to sell their wine, their lobsters, their beer and much, much more in this country.

And these policies are making a real difference to small business. Businesses like Endua, in Archerfield in my local electorate, have benefited from funding from the federal government's Industry Growth Program, which provides grants that are aligned with the seven government priority areas for the $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund. Another Moreton success story is the Bureau Technologies Group, which received funding through the Cooperative Research Centre Projects Grants program. It has developed breakthrough solar technology to convert carbon neutral biogas to green methanol fuel on par with fossil fuel prices.

It's clear that Labor stands behind small businesses and delivering real outcomes— (Time expired)

Ben Small (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm glad the member for Moreton mentioned the spotlight. Where the spotlight on the debate for small business should rightly be is on the disgraceful statements made in the House of Representatives just last week by the Minister for Small Business who, when confronted with the 41,749 small-business insolvencies that occurred on the watch of the Albanese government simply said, 'Maybe they were dodgy.' That's not a sick joke; that is actually the statement that the Minister for Small Business made in the House of Representatives.

Each one of those 41,749 small-business insolvencies represents the blood, sweat and tears of people—perhaps of a family or perhaps a husband and wife or perhaps a couple of mates—who have decided, in pursuit of the great Australian dream of building something, of creating opportunities for others, to take a risk and ask nothing more than for government to get out of the way and allow them to enjoy some rewards for their efforts. Instead, they have been crushed by the ever-increasing tide of costs due to the Albanese Labor government's failure to control inflation, drowning in the red tape and regulation that restrict the entrepreneurialism that should be unshackled if we want our economy to grow once more.

And so with each one of those 41,749 small businesses that have become insolvent, the dreams of those small-business owners have been extinguished and the Australian economy is poorer as a result. And what do we get? We get lectured by those opposite on the state of our own internal party affairs. We get lectured about how government programs that take money off businesses to recycle it back to a selected few businesses somehow creates conditions for Australian businesses to prosper. In my electorate and across the country, the reality couldn't be further from that. If a government can't get out of the way of small business and debtors, it leaves Australia poorer as a country. Our capacity to pay for those who are vulnerable, for those who deserve a helping hand up in our economy is dependent on continued economic growth. It is not dependent on four in five jobs being dependent on taxpayer money in some respect. It is dependent on a healthy private sector driven by that small-business entrepreneurialism.

This is a relatively new phenomenon for Australia because we have never seen anything like the level of small-business insolvency that is occurring under the Albanese government. There has been a 260 per cent increase in the insolvency rate since Labor was elected in 2022. With those insolvency figures exploding, and each one of them representing the very real dreams of Australians going up in smoke, you would expect the government to take a serious look at what is occurring and why it is that businesses are collapsing left, right and centre. If you took an honest look, as this government should, you would see that costs across the economy are exploding and there is a disproportionate impact on certain sectors, like the construction, hospitality and retail sectors. Indeed, construction and hospitality alone account for some 42 per cent of insolvencies. In the hospitality sector, we're seeing insolvency rise at more than a 50 per cent year-on-year rate. This is ASIC data; this isn't hyperbole from the opposition. Instead of responsible government taking deep action to address this, we're seeing things like the general interest charge levied by the ATO being made non-tax-deductible by the government, a government which is so drunk on spending, so addicted to throwing money out the door on ever bigger government programs, that small businesses who are already facing severe cost challenges are slapped in the face with the interest bills they pay to the ATO no longer being deductible like every other form of interest. It's unfair, it targets those who are having a go in our economy and it is emblematic of this government's approach to small business.

These are businesses—mums and dads, husbands, wives, a couple of mates—who deserve a break. Instead, those cost pressures—soaring energy bills, rising insurance premiums, employee costs through the roof—are driving insolvency at a rate unseen in this country and without response from this government.

Matt Gregg (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I note that the member for Forrest has encouraged the government to carefully read the insolvency statistics. One thing I would note about those statistics is that insolvency does not equate to the closing of a business. For example, in 2021 the coalition government introduced small-business restructuring, a debt management regime which now accounts for about 20 per cent of insolvency data.

To be a nerd, section 95A of the Corporations Act includes in the definition of insolvency those on small business restructuring, the vast majority of whom actually don't stop trading. They continue to be under the control of their existing directors and continue trading. It's a way of managing the debts of small businesses which have come to a form of trouble over time. Many recover. The same is true of some other businesses that go into administration. I've been involved over the years with many deed-of-company relaunches, and it is not always the end of the road. But the underlying truth of what's raised needs to be discussed. It is a difficult time for many small businesses, including in my community. My home, Deakin, has about 16,000 businesses in it, the vast majority of which are small businesses. It is a challenging time, and they do deserve further support.

We saw, in the decade leading up to COVID, an increased reduction in competition and market power concentrating. The Albanese government has been bringing forward a lot of initiatives going to that very issue. We've got changes to unfair-contracting laws helping to balance the relationship between small and large businesses. We're currently working on reforms to extend unfair-trading policies to small businesses as well. That's in addition to all the work being done in the National Small Business Strategy cutting regulation. We've already seen the beginning of that, with the omnibus act, and there's more work being done to review around 400 more opportunities to improve regulation for small businesses, cutting that red tape as well as looking at another phenomenon, white tape, which is the bureaucracy and challenges that sometimes large businesses impose on small businesses.

There are challenges to the operating environment, and I think across the board we share a desire to create an operating environment where small business can thrive. There are clear roads for us to get there. We need to get rid of nonsense red tape. We need to make sure that we address unnecessary complexity that arises from the federation, with state and federal regulations and regimes sometimes causing unnecessary difficulties for small businesses just trying to have a go. Also, there are our efforts to reduce the cost of energy by including them in the solar batteries program and actually getting on with the job of transitioning our power grid. We're looking at the franchising code to, again, deal with that power imbalance. We have tax cuts that have been extended to 1.5 million sole traders, which are also very important businesses doing a lot of work as part of our local economy.

Small businesses in our country account for the employment of about 5.16 million Australians. That is well over 30 per cent of the workforce relying on small businesses. We need to ensure that we have a competitive environment where small business can thrive—that we have more competition, because it is competition that has brought in higher productivity over the years. It was noted in an RBA article last year, the fact that we had such a reduction in competition, and the reduction in the number of firms dominating different sectors has probably cost us activity of around one per cent to three per cent a year. That is directly undermining the mission we have to increase productivity and competition. Competition is going to be key for us increasing productivity. As I'm sure our friends in the coalition would agree, it is a fundamental part of capitalism that competition is a good thing, and we need to encourage that as much as possible.

The work being done to ensure that small businesses are getting a fair go vis-a-vis dominant players in the market is actually incredibly important work. But a lot of the regulatory reform that I've heard proposed from the other side is really just code for cutting the wages and conditions of working people. That is an experiment that has been tried and has failed for a decade. We saw, again, in the lead-up to COVID, a reduction in competition and productivity results that really began a long-term program of being very low.

We've got to do everything we can to increase competition and productivity within our sectors. The focus is not only on evening the playing field for small businesses vis-a-vis larger businesses. It also needs to be complemented by a dedication to training, making sure that the workforce has the skills it needs to increase the productivity of our business sectors. We also need to be honest within government and make sure that we are being as productive as we can, and that's why I'm so pleased to see the work being done by the Minister for Finance in continuing to review all of our regulations, making sure that businesses don't have to provide the same piece of information more than once—unnecessary inefficiencies that don't go to any of the policy positions of any side of politics.

Sometimes it's easy in politics to attack a regulation that is really going towards a policy ambition of your opponents. You say, 'Anything that they want is bad regulation,' but there are sometimes regulations that don't serve a public-policy purpose. We share a desire to ensure that we have the best operating environment for small business, and I'm proud to be part of a government that is doing the real work.

Leon Rebello (McPherson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to speak to this motion moved by the member for Goldstein, because it gives us an opportunity to not only talk about the importance of small business but to talk about what we are seeing in government at the highest levels right now. It's important for a number of reasons, and I've been the beneficiary of small business. I grew up in a small-business family, and I understood very much the sacrifices that were involved in that. I saw my parents work very hard. They took on multiple jobs. They always had to make sure that others were paid before them. It's those sacrifices that go to the heart of the Australian character. It's something that as a country we should make sure we support, we encourage and we allow to thrive. It's more than just the profit. It's about giving people agency over their own lives. It's about backing themselves or allowing them to back themselves so that they can take risks and build something that lasts and, in doing so, support the employment of thousands of Australians.

It's that spirit, that pursuit of reward for risk, of resilience with responsibility, that sits at the heart of the small-business community in my electorate of McPherson on the southern Gold Coast. With where we're at as a country, what we've seen over the last couple of days is statistics that are coming out that are shocking. They are quite frankly frightening, with 41,749 collapsing, with 2025 being the worst year for small-business insolvencies since records began. I was in the House of Representatives—I think it was last week—and I sat across from the Minister for Small Business when I heard her attack the shadow minister for small business and say, 'The reason that these businesses have gone insolvent is potentially because they were dodgy. To hear that level of not only distrust but arrogance coming out of the person who's supposed to be standing up for small businesses in this country is unacceptable. This prime minister now holds an unenviable record of being the worst prime minister in Australian history for small-business insolvencies.

I heard the member for Deakin, who I think is a fantastic individual, before say that insolvencies don't necessarily mean the end for small business. This, combined with what the Minister for Small Business has been going on about and combined with the Treasurer and his recent comments about the state of our economy, paint a consistent profile of a government that is ignoring the reality of the situation that they have created, and the reality of that situation is that small businesses across this country, including in my electorate, are hurting. They're struggling. What is the consequence of this? We're actually fostering a new generation that is turning around and saying, 'We don't want to engage in that risk, because we're seeing our parents, we're seeing our families, and we're seeing people around us who have done that, and government has actually punished them.' It's not because of their own doings. I don't believe it's because small businesses are dodgy. I believe it's because we've got a government that is not creating the economic conditions to allow its citizens to thrive, to take risks, to back their judgment and to support growth. It's too expensive. It's not only that it's too expensive; it is overly burdensome in terms of the obligations the government places on small-business owners.

Small businesses are being hit across the spectrum at the moment. If they're not being hit for industrial relations issues, they're being hit with the cost of energy. I spoke to a small business in Robina Town Centre in my electorate not too long ago who had suffered electricity bills of more than $7,000. These are unsustainable figures. We need to make sure that we hold this government to account, because they need to—and somebody needs to—stand up for those individuals who are putting in their all and who are still hitting the brick wall.

The government is treating small businesses like an ATM, and while they're spending faster than the tax base can support, they're thinking, 'If we just tax more, if we regulate more, if we control more, we are actually going to, as a government, be able to deliver some of the services that Australians need.' That is not the solution. That is not how you generate growth in this country and it's not how you generate growth anywhere. For as long as I'm in this place, I will make sure that we hold this government to account, because small businesses expect nothing less and they are not getting what they deserve from an out-of-touch Albanese Labor government.

Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.