I have received a letter from the Leader of the Opposition proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The damage done by the current Treasurer's taxes on every Australian small and family business.

I call upon those honourable members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

I've noted that the Prime Minister still hasn't published his speech that he made to business leaders on Monday night. He hasn't published it, and I think I know from the noise I hear from behind me that we know why. It's because the Prime Minister used his speech to tell them that he had overruled the Treasurer. You can see it now: the Prime Minister, in all his arrogance—the saviour, the hero, the white knight—personally intervening, delaying the tax office's absurd ban on credit cards for small businesses, countermanding his treasurer and not stepping back but stepping in, showing who's in charge. He mogged the Treasurer. That's what he did. He showed the Treasurer who wears the pants in the relationship. That's what he did.

You would have to be living on Mars not to see the rift in the relationship between the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. The Treasurer wasn't here today, but—I'll tell you what—the Prime Minister looked very happy not having the Treasurer here today. He looked very happy calling the Assistant Treasurer to come forth and cover for his hapless minister for small business. He did it on multiple occasions. I am tempted to liken this to the Hawke-Keating rift, but it would be an insult to compare two economic heavyweights—I'll make that concession with Hawke and Keating—to the complete lightweights we have in the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. In question time, Labor's Caesar and Pompey are putting on quite a show—the forced smiles, the contrived statements of unanimity. You see the Treasurer looking down at his phone when the Prime Minister has to answer why he shouldn't sack his hapless treasurer. Even the doctor of spin can't spin away his ruptured relationship with the Prime Minister. He can't do it. Even this truth-twisting prime minister can't reframe the relationship between the two.

It's not just the Prime Minister and the Treasurer who are at loggerheads. Cabinet ministers are leaking. Backbenchers are speaking out. The member for Parramatta, today, was out. The Attorney-General was out. Lefty is turning on lefty, and there's nothing like lefty turning on lefty. There is nothing like it. It is back to the future, because I see it all over again. The Rudd-Gillard years are happening all over again.

Most importantly, Australians are seeing the wheels falling off the wagon with this government. What a shocking week for the government. The Federal Court overturned the Minister for the Environment and Water's decision on the Blayney gold mine—a decision that should never have been made, wrecking a great town in central western New South Wales, taking away the future of that town. A court has overruled that decision—a humiliation for the government.

Yesterday, there was yet another embarrassment, when the Senate rightly banded together to overturn the decision this government had made to hurt the over-65s by taking away their support for private health insurance. But it's worse: that proposal was going to hurt every Australian by adding to congestion in the public health system. We've fought long and hard against Labor's mean-spirited cash grab.

There have been other shockers this week. The government distributed $300,000 to an Islamist extremist media company that has been spewing hatred against Australian Jews—absolute shame.

Then there's the government's abhorrent legislation to put a tax on trusts. These are the very hardest working Australians. They don't get what employees get. They don't get a fixed income. They have to earn every single dollar they earn. This government wants to punish the tradies, the truckies, the farmers, the pharmacists, the cafe and restaurant owners, the builders—who build this country, who make this country what it is. Now, if the hopeless minister for small business actually visited some small businesses instead of spending $150,000 on overseas jaunts, she would appreciate that hundreds of thousands of Australian small businesses use that structure for flexibility because they need it. They are working harder than ever for less than ever. That is the reality, and we hear it every single day. I was with Tiffany today in Garran; she owns a cafe there. She is working seven days a week, every single week, and this government punishes her and every other small-business person in the country with its decisions.

Now, the wheels are falling off the wagon. Will the Prime Minister dump the Treasurer, or will the Treasurer dump the Prime Minister—or will there be a complete clean-out? I think the Assistant Treasurer is waiting for his opportunity. The members for Hindmarsh and Parramatta, as well as the Assistant Treasurer—they're strutting their stuff. He was out there today; we saw him. He's about to do it again! I don't know where the member for Parramatta is. I'd have thought he'd be doing a bit of an audition today as well.

The sad reality is that it doesn't matter who's in the chair. You're going to get the same policies every single time, where we see government spending at a 40-year high outside of the pandemic, fuelling inflation; 16 interest rate increases; 30 business failures a day; everything costing more—groceries, mortgages, insurance, you name it; the worst collapse in living standards in the developed world; power bills skyrocketing 40 per cent—still waiting for that $275. They came down 10 per cent when I was minister. I got the runs on the board, but there are no runs on the board from this hapless minister for climate change and energy. Confidence smashed, enterprise obstructed, investment hindered, productivity back five per cent—that means Australians are working five per cent harder for the same they were getting 4½ years ago. This is the reality of modern Australia: managed decline by this government.

Well, there's a better way. That means axing Labor's toxic taxes, red tape and waste—their tax on small businesses, on houses, capital gains. It means getting rid of the waste of this government—a trillion dollars of debt, green hydrogen. Even the energy minister's admitted it was a mirage—$7 billion a year of mirage. There's the red tape—2,000 pages in the National Construction Code, telling a builder how to build a house, adding $70,000 to the cost of building a house. We'll scrap their net zero. We'll scrap that energy minister with it because he's been absolutely hopeless. We will dig and drill for our coal and our oil in this country—and uranium. We will raise the moratorium on nuclear in this country.

We will end Labor's mass migration and replace it with skilled migration. We've never seen anything like it: 1.5 million people in four years—the population of Adelaide. At the end of that, small businesses still can't get the people they need. Those opposite are creating a guest worker economy—three million people on temporary visas, up almost a million since they came to government. We will change that. We will oversee the end of bridging visas, which are being exploited in this country. We will make sure our universities are selling educational excellence, not visas, and we will put Australians first. We'll protect our flag, our national day, our statues, because we believe this is the greatest country on earth—it just doesn't feel like that for so many Australians right now. Australia is worth fighting for, and we will fight every single day to get Australia back.

I can only imagine, when news went out in the community this morning that the opposition leader was hosting an MPI today on small business that small business operators around the country thought, 'Here's my chance in my very busy day to take a little time out to log into live streaming of parliament to hear the opposition leader's great plans on small business.' All around the community, people had great expectation about this Thursday afternoon's MPI, where the opposition leader would finally lay it all out—his plan for small business. Although I don't want to misrepresent parliament and suggest that that is literally true, what I would say is the reason why it's important to imagine a small business operator logging into today's streaming is because, if any small business operator was actually listening to that last 10 minutes, what they would have heard was about just anything but small-business issues. It was about six minutes into that 10-minute speech, the first time that I heard 'small business' mentioned. Instead, what we heard was minute after minute of juvenile personal attacks, a rambling stream-of-conscious tour through the issues of the day according to the Leader of the Opposition—or rather stream of the subconscious. What we heard in that last 10 minutes was really the problem of the opposition—their knee-jerk reaction to every single issue of the day with an irresponsible populist response rather than a coherent response.

I'm going to talk in my speech about small business, about the actual topic of the MPI. I'm going to start by saying that we on this side understand that small businesses are the backbone of the Australian economy. Small businesses are the local cafe owner operating before dawn; the tradie working on weekends to grow their business; the retailer backing their community and the family business, employing local people; the small business operators working long hours putting their whole into their business, taking risks, and taking an idea and a dream and making it into a business reality. There are more than 2.7 million small businesses operating across Australia, and they employ millions of Australians. We understand that and that's why it's such a priority for this government.

We understand that higher costs, skills shortages, supply chain disruptions and rising interest rates have all placed pressure on small businesses, who are already doing it tough, and that's why we have a whole raft of policies that we have already delivered, and so many more that we are working on and will deliver in the future. We have already provided so much support to small business through the tax system. One that stands out is making the $20,000 instant asset write-off deduction permanent. That is something which small business had been calling for, for a long time. Until the last budget, it had been an annual dance as to whether it would be included in the next budget. Now small business has certainty on this deduction that is so important for so many businesses.

We are delivering $3.5 billion in business tax relief to support investment, productivity and growth. We are introducing a permanent two-year loss carry-back for eligible businesses. This will help businesses recover faster and invest with greater confidence, and that is so important in times like this, with uncertainty in global conditions, with uncertainty in broader economic conditions.

Around 1.5 million sole traders will benefit from our tax relief measures for working Australians. We are also working on cutting red tape across the economy, including for small business. In the last budget we identified over $10 billion in savings from better designed regulation.

The Leader of the Opposition mentioned the National Construction Code. They left the National Construction Code in a position where it was imposing huge costs. As a result of the three-day Economic Reform Roundtable convened by the Treasurer, the National Construction Code has been frozen. I identify and applaud the work of the Minister for Housing. That is going to lead to more houses being built. That's something which we did. The opposition, when they were in government for almost a decade, didn't move anywhere near that. It's not surprising in some ways because, for so much of that period, they didn't even have a minister for housing in the cabinet. We're helping small business deal with so many of these cost pressures.

We're also dealing with a range of other measures that affect small business, including helping them with their energy bills. We've provided significant relief in previous budgets to energy bills. The surcharging reforms are important reforms that have been called on for so long by consumers and businesses alike. Australia is one of the leaders in fintech, in financial and payment system technology. I was at an event this morning where we were lauding the efforts of innovation in the fintech sector. But, when it came to surcharging, we were basically the last major advanced economy to have surcharging. So the RBA made recommendations and then implemented a ban on surcharging. This is very important for consumer transparency. It means that the price that is advertised is the price that you'll tap.

What we understood is that small business needed a transition period. The ATO implemented a transition period of two months. When we heard loud and clear that small business needed longer, we acted. That transition period will now operate all the way through to the end of the financial year, 30 June next year. The Treasurer and I have asked the ATO commissioner to work on arrangements—for example, for hardship—going beyond 30 June next year.

Labor has strengthened protections for franchisees and is boosting enforcement of the Franchising Code of Conduct. We have also extended unfair trading protections to small business so that large businesses can't use their market power to push small operators around. This includes, for example, measures which the assistant minister for Treasury, the member for Fenner, has worked on with the Treasurer in relation to increasing price-gouging penalties tenfold. These are important measures which have been very instrumental in making sure that companies face real threats if they abuse their market power.

We're also promoting faster payments for contractors and subcontractors working on major Commonwealth backed projects, because small businesses should not be left waiting to be paid for work that they've undertaken. We understand how important cash flow is for small businesses. Small businesses don't pay their bills with rhetoric. The last 10-minute contribution, by the Leader of the Opposition, had so much rhetoric. As I said, it was a bare minority, a sliver, of that speech that even referred to small business. These are concrete actions that we've taken that have reduced the tax bill, that have reduced the regulatory burden and that have improved regulatory structures for small business. Those opposite, from the almost decade that they were in power, could point to almost nothing in that realm that was actually delivered.

Let's look at the alternative and what's actually happened in practice. Time and again, those opposite have opposed measures designed to support workers, households and economic growth. We know they've opposed almost every cost-of-living support during this last 4½ years. We know they've opposed tax cuts for every Australian taxpayer, but they have also delayed support for small businesses, including extensions to the instant asset write-off when those measures came before parliament. So those opposite talk the big talk—and this was something which came up a lot in question time today—but, when it comes to actually voting for measures that will help small business, when it actually comes to voting for measures that will reduce tax burden and when it actually comes to tough measures that are needed for responsible economic management, they decline to take that opportunity time and time again.

The coalition and One Nation are also falling over themselves to announce the biggest, most unrealistic, most unmodelled cuts to migration. Their plan will affect the cafe owner trying to find staff, the regional business that can't recruit workers or the employer who's trying to find skilled workers to grow. That's why business peak bodies around the country are complaining about the irresponsible behaviour of the opposition chasing One Nation in a race to the bottom. It's just one other manifestation of their incredibly incoherent and irresponsible approach to economic management. On top of that, it's an entirely cynical political exercise which is going to have very damaging repercussions for social cohesion.

I want to focus today—unlike the Leader of the Opposition and, I imagine, some further speakers—on the actual topic at hand: small business. I want to re-emphasise that there is a long list of things we've done for small business. That is very concrete. There is more to do. We understand—I understand—that many small businesses are still doing it tough, so we will continue, in the next budget and budgets in the future, to do more. But we have done a lot that is proof positive that we take this issue very seriously.

That was a solid audition from my friend the Assistant Treasurer. I'll give him credit: at least he did stick to policy. We do know that the current treasurer, when under pressure, resorts to attacking personally, so I'll give the Assistant Treasurer credit for that. But I will talk about policy and I'll talk about alternatives. The minister mentioned the instant asset write-off. What he didn't talk about was that the Labor government voted against increasing the instant asset write-off to $50,000 per year for small business. They talk about how important the instant asset write-off is, but they refuse to increase it to $50,000 to help every business across the community. The assistant minister talked about freezing the construction code and what a great policy that was. What the assistant minister forgot to mention was that was the coalition policy at the 2025 election that this government was happy to steal and rebadge because they had no ideas of their own. He was also happy to talk about banning surcharges. Clearly, the assistant minister hasn't been talking to small business about their thoughts on banning surcharges.

I've been out talking to my community. A small-business owner sent this text to me recently: 'Why would you bother running a business in Oz, mate? Small business is expected to absorb credit card surcharges. ATO says no to credit cards. I just got a business credit card to pay the ATO. It's hard to cop along with everything else.' That's how small-business owners in my community—and, I have no doubt, small-business owners on the Labor backbench—are feeling. While we're here in Canberra, it's 3.47 back in Victoria, and I know that, right now, there are tradies and business owners who have been up since 4.30 or 5 o'clock this morning. They've driven to the job site, they've finished up for the day and they'll be stuck, probably, in traffic on the Eastern Freeway, trying to get back home. But, as they're in that car, they'll be thinking. They'll be thinking, 'How do I pay my staff, how do I pay my apprentice, how do I pay my suppliers and how do I make it all add up so I can put some food on the table for my family and pay my bills?' Then, when they get home this afternoon, they'll spend some time with their families, but, as they're playing with their kids, they'll be thinking: 'How do I make it all add up? How do I make this work? I've got everything on the line.' Then, when they put their head down on the pillow tonight, after they've kissed their kids goodnight, they'll be thinking, 'How do I make this work? How do I keep my staff employed? How do I pay the bills? How do I keep going?'

That is the reality of running a small business across this country and in my community of Casey today. They will have just a sliver of comfort in the background, particularly if they're a tradie. They'll go: 'Well, the only silver lining, if I have to lose it all—because all my costs have gone up, subcontractors are more expensive, I'm not getting paid, the builder might have gone broke and I can't make it work—is that at least my house is okay. At least my house is okay because it's in a trust.' Not anymore. This treasurer and this government are coming after you to make sure that you can't put your house and your personal assets in a trust anymore to keep them safe. You will have to pay more and more. If you want to restructure, you will be caught by this government.

The reality is that this treasurer hasn't spent a day in business. He hasn't understood the pain that you face and the challenges that you face. He cannot comprehend a world where trusts are for small-business owners and for tradies just looking to get ahead, looking to protect their family. As a small-business owner, you're going to have to now go to your accountant. You're going to have to go to your financial adviser and potentially pay tens of thousands of dollars to look to restructure. That is the world that we are living in under this government.

Not you!

I will take the interjections from those opposite, because they know it's an uncomfortable topic, but the reality is that they have to deal with this treasurer. They don't support him, but they've got to sit there quietly and continue to background to other journalists.

I am fond of the member for Casey, and I think he was a bit forward-leaning when talking about auditions, because he was holding up a mirror during that speech and really could see himself at the dispatch box as a more prominent role, I would think, in whatever world happens after they roll the Leader of the Opposition. This hapless leader of the opposition's rambling speech at the start of this MPI was unbecoming of the office that he holds. If you want to look at the Leader of the Opposition's calibre right now, you can go onto his social media. The sorts of posts that that page has currently going on right now about the Minister for Small Business show exactly the substance of the Leader of the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition, frankly, should take that post down right now. If any of your staff are watching right now, they should just take a good, hard, long look at themselves and think about what they're doing in this place and the office that they hold as the alternative office seeking to be the prime minister of this country. I would just say, to the Leader of the Opposition, don't go that low. You don't need to. This country and this parliament deserve someone who occupies your office to have more respect than that.

The other thing I would say, on more day-to-day matters, is that the Leader of the Opposition, his record and the things that he was talking about during his speech frankly need to be scrutinised. We brought tax cuts to the last election, tax cuts for hardworking Australians. I'll read out what the Leader of the Opposition said before the election. The Leader of the Opposition said this in March 2025: 'Labor's tax cuts are a cruel hoax. We won't support what they're doing here.' Fast-forward a federal election. What does the Leader of the Opposition say about the tax cuts? He said:

… we need to be the party of lower taxes, including lower personal income taxes. I think that was a mistake.

He realised his own mistake. He realised the mistake of the coalition of opposing Labor tax cuts at the last election, opposing them time and time again. They opposed the stage 3 tax cut changes that we made to make sure that not just higher-income earners but also lower- and middle-income workers across the country got a tax cut.

But of course, then, what's their big, grand plan? What's the big thing that the Leader of the Opposition decides to do in this place? Instead of talking about small businesses, he talks about mining uranium and lifting the moratorium on nuclear energy.

Plenty of small businesses in uranium!

Yes, there are a lot of small businesses mining uranium around the world. I'm sure of it. But the Leader of the Opposition seems to have learned his lesson on taxes and not opposing income taxes. But, by golly, these people just keep going back to the same old play. If you remember the previous leader of the opposition—actually, no, the previous previous leader of the opposition, before they rolled Sussan Ley—Peter Dutton came out and announced his nuclear energy policy before the last election and refused to go and visit one of the seven sites that they were proposing to have nuclear energy at any point throughout the election campaign. And what happened when they were leading with nuclear energy as their key election platform? Half the Liberal Party got wiped out, especially in the cities. It's hardly surprising that, when the Leader of the Opposition is lurching to the far right on every single opportunity with deep cuts to migration and chasing Pauline Hanson down the rabbit hole, the Business Council and all of the major business industry groups are saying that the coalition have literally lost their minds.

It's not surprising that we then have the other guy, the former treasurer, out there telling everyone how ready he is to take on the top job. The former treasurer is not bad at getting media. I'll give him that. But there are quite a few people over there that are very, very quietly quite happy for the former treasurer, the former member for Kooyong, to be out there strutting his stuff. I'll read out a couple of quotes of people who were thinking about whether or not Josh Frydenberg could lead the Liberal Party. Senator Kovacic said:

He's been the Treasurer … so that goes without saying, but obviously he's not in the party room now. We have got a leader.

It's not exactly the biggest endorsement of the current leadership. My friend Senator Sharma said:

Angus is our leader and Josh is not in the contest, so I'm backing Angus.

It's very qualified support from Senator Sharma for the Leader of the Opposition. (Time expired)

If the member for Macnamara is so fond of tax cuts, I invite him to join us on our lifetime tax cut, because we're offering every single Australian a tax cut every year for the rest of their lives. That is the current coalition policy. Every single year for the rest of their lives, we want to give every Australian a tax cut. Join us. Join us in a moment of bipartisanship. We would love to work with you to give every single Australian—because this government is currently the highest taxing government of all time. Income tax as a percentage of GDP has never been higher, and people are getting crushed.

Yesterday, on a very dark morning, Sunrise gave us some quotes. They said, 'We've got stark predictions for the Australian economy, with inflation and unemployment one of the worst in the developed world.' That's what Sunrise said yesterday. What was Sunrise referring to on this dark morning? They were referring to the International Monetary Fund. The International Monetary Fund looks at 43 advanced economies. They're basically every country in the world you'd want to live in: the US, Canada, developed Asia, South Korea, Japan, most of Europe, the big countries in South America. They benchmark those 43 countries.

How does Australia compare to the 43 advanced economies in the world? With interest rate rises this year, we are dead last. We're the only advanced economy in the world out of 43 advanced economies to have four interest rate rises this year. Of those 43 advanced economies, there's only one that's had three: Iceland. There are a handful that have two, and most have had less than that. We are dead last in the amount of interest rate rises this year. If you listen to Treasurer Chalmers, he'll tell you it's the war on Iran. Well, how do we compare to those 43 advanced economies before the war in Iran? Shockingly—surprise, surprise—we had the third highest inflation. Of all 43 advanced economies in the world, Australia was third last in that, doing comparatively better than the interest rate rises.

What's the International Monetary Fund predicting for our future? Surely, under Treasurer Chalmers, he's going to turn it around and it's going to be glowingly better. What we learned is that they're predicting that Australia will have the largest increase in unemployment in the developed world. They're predicting that we will come dead last in unemployment as well next year. What are they predicting for inflation? Surely, he's going to get that under control. Surely, we wouldn't be a global outlier in inflation as well. They're predicting we will be fifth out of the 43 advanced economies for our rate of inflation—fifth last in the world.

Australia is literally a global outlier. We are a global pariah in the advanced economic world. I invite the next speaker, whoever it is, to explain why it is that we have had the most interest rate rises in the advanced world. Why is it that we had the third highest inflation before Iran? Why is it that we're having the largest increase in unemployment next year? Why is it that we'll be the fifth in the world for inflation next year? Why are we this global outlier after four years of this Labor government? What has Australia got that others don't? We've got government spending at a 40-year high outside the pandemic. We have public demand growing twice as fast as the rest of the economy. Australia is struggling, and it's sad to say.

I had a small-business forum in Cook recently. A hundred small-business owners gathered in a room. As one small-business owner put it: 'I'm getting smashed by everyone all at once. I can't get ahead against this Labor government and I can't catch a break.' Almost 70 per cent of Cook and 70 per cent of Australia is employed by small business. They are the lifeblood of this country. Small business hires while large business fires. The only group that net adds more jobs than it takes away is small business. Large business fires more than it hires, and this small-business group is on its knees. That was the message I got from the hundred small-business owners that were gathered in the room only two weeks ago. They are crying out for help. That's why we will hold this government to account. We will fight for Australia to not be an economic pariah and for Australia to lead the world and not be a laggard.

We heard the rambling MPI from the Leader of the Opposition and we heard that the Leader of the Opposition is focused on culture wars. He's focused on punching down on migrant communities. He's focused, desperately, on trying to stave off One Nation and lurching further and further to the right. But we didn't hear him talk much about small business. We, on this side of the House, are focused on supporting our small businesses in our communities every single day, and we're focused on cost-of-living pressures. We know that Australians are under cost-of-living pressures and that small businesses are under pressure. Every single member on this side of the House engages with their communities and small businesses regularly, so we understand the kinds of pressures that they're under. That's why we're focused on solutions. We're not focused on harvesting grievance and we're not focused on sowing division; we're focused on helping them, with real solutions.

My wife works in a fantastic small business. They're flexible when it comes to helping our kids. When the business is doing well, they pass on pay rises to their workers, and, like many small businesses, they're deeply involved in the community. They support our local sporting clubs and they support the local neighbourhood watch. We know that small businesses are so much a part of the colour and the character that make up our local communities.

I'm lucky to represent an area that has about 22,000 small businesses. I've engaged with a range of the organisations and the small businesses. We've got the Jackson Court Traders Association. I was with them a few weeks ago, with Diana at Royal Stacks and the other members of the Jackson Court Traders Association. They're focused on working together and helping each other. They've got the Jackson Court Halloween Spooktacular 2026 coming up, which I'm really looking forward to. I haven't chosen a costume yet! They get thousands of the local residents through, attract them towards their businesses and get a lot more foot traffic in order to support each other in that way.

We've got the Whitehorse Business Group, which I attended a few months ago to talk about some of our changes in the budget. I've conducted a number of business roundtables, and I'd like to thank every single one of the businesses. We had the Chinese culinary foundation. We had people who were investing in housing. We had people working in every kind of small business attend those, and I think it's really important that we, as members of this House, listen to our small businesses and listen to the kinds of supports that they need.

We also have Persian Business Referrals. They meet every Saturday at seven o'clock in the morning. They're well attended. They support people from Persian backgrounds. Like so many small businesses, there are a lot of our businesses that are owned by people from migrant backgrounds. As the Prime Minister said during question time, a third of businesses are owned by people of migrant backgrounds. They give so much to our community, and we all benefit by having a lot more choice in food. We know how much the food culture in our local areas has improved. Around Box Hill, we don't just have one kind of Chinese food; you can get Chinese food from a range of areas. You can get Indian food and Korean food. In my area, you can get fantastic Persian food as well, as I've said. I'd invite any member of parliament to pop down to the area around Menzies if you want to try some amazing fare.

We're focused on making sure that we're doing everything we can to make life easier for small businesses, not just sowing fear and division. That's why in the last budget we've provided $3.8 billion in new tax relief and practical measures. These practical measures include the $20,000 instant asset write-off, which we have made permanent. Around 300,000 small businesses claimed it in the 2024-25 financial year. Every year since 2015 owners have waited to see if it would be made permanent. That's exactly what we did. That helps them with their cash flow

Menzies has a lot of professionals and a lot of tradies. The professional services, construction and real estate, make up around 15 per cent of local businesses. Construction makes up around 15 per cent of Menzies businesses. There are a lot of sole traders. The write-off means that they can buy tools and utes and that they'll be able to keep that important cash flow going, as does the permanent two-year loss carry-back. We've also got loss refundability for start-ups because we want to make sure that we're backing those who are coming up with innovative ideas, and we're going to continue to make sure that we're supporting our small businesses in every single way that we can.

I am someone who's really passionate about small and family run businesses. I grew up in one, and it's a great privilege to represent people who get out of bed every morning and put their house on the line to give other people a shot at a job. They're the first people in our community to put their hand up and sponsor everything from the local footy and netball teams to the food bank. They volunteer in our service clubs. And I tell you what, they deserve so much better and so much more than what they're being served up by this Labor government right now.

I think 'rambling' must have been in the talking points, because I've heard it in a few contributions by my good friends on the other side of the chamber this afternoon. Well, if you want to see rambling, you should have seen the ACCI speech delivered by the Prime Minister earlier this week. It was like the dodgem cars at the Melbourne Royal Show; it was just banging into everything in sight. It went from one corner to the other. It was a range of pointless lines delivered by the Prime Minister. But the real kicker—my good friend the member for Nicholls is nodding at this—was, I thought, the gratuitous humiliation of the Treasurer. I actually felt kind of sorry for him. I thought he deserved better from his leader than the way he was thrown under the bus in a gratuitous way. It was embarrassing and humiliating. I thought he deserved a lot better than what he got at that ACCI dinner. And this week there's been clean up in aisle eight ever since.

I'm going to raise some examples of the impost and the impact of this Treasurer's taxes on family run and small businesses in my electorate, because they are really suffering right now. They're really suffering from the price of input costs going up. I visited a transport company with the Leader of the Opposition a fortnight ago in my electorate. That fellow is paying $40,000 a fortnight in fuel. Everything is going up across the board. We visited a local food bank, and they are having thousands of people come through their doors because. These are people who are doing it really rough, who are sleeping rough, who are homeless, but these are also people who are fully employed, who are working two or more jobs. They cannot keep pace with their mortgage repayments. They cannot keep up with their rent under this government.

But let me run you through a few examples from my electorate. Just today, actually, I had an accountant from South Gippsland who had four clients today alone who have had to seek assistance in restructuring due to this Treasurer's trust changes. She says the cost is huge and, while changes can be made, it will cause massive disruption and leave them wide open with no protections in place.

Another example I want to raise is a constituent from Loch, also in South Gippsland. A cafe owner contacted my office frustrated that that all levels of government—the member for Nicholls and I are passionate Victorians—and that state and federal Labor governments right now are just smashing small businesses. This fellow said he simply cannot work any harder or continue to absorb spiralling costs. He believes he will have no choice but to increase his prices by seven to eight per cent, passing on those costs to customers. He purchased his cafe three years ago with a 10-year business plan and he questions why he should take all the financial risk, work the long hours and build a successful business only to potentially pay 47 per cent in capital gains tax when he eventually sells.

I also want to raise the example of a fellow who's very well-known to many Gippslanders and indeed many people right across Australia, and that's Jason Bargwanna, also known as Bargs in the Gippsland region. He's a former Bathurst 1000 winner. He contacted me about the fuel assistance scheme. He operates Gippsland Couriers in Warragul in West Gippsland. His weekly fuel bill increased from $9,000 to $10,000 per week. He's been mucked around by the federal government's Economic Resilience Program, mucked around by the Treasurer. He's got 40 staff and a belief in employing local people and putting back into the local community. But right now Jason Bargwanna, a champion in our region and a champion for Australia, can't get ahead, and neither can thousands of other honest, hardworking Australian small-business owners.

Those opposite have once again tried to spin a false story around small and family businesses. This government, one I am proud to be a part of, actually understands the daily rewards and challenges of small businesses. How? Because on this side we have lived it. Do you know who has run a small business? The incredible member for Eden-Monaro, and my good friend the member for Bullwinkel, who, on top of being a passionate and committed nurse, ran her own small business. And the member for Macquarie has also faced the challenges and opportunities of running her own small business. This is just a fraction of the many members on this side who know the hard work and dedication of running a small business. So when those opposite want to throw labels around about who understands small business, maybe they could learn a thing or two from those on this side of the chamber.

There is yet another member on this side who has run a small business—yes, it's me. I know what it's like to worry about paying staff, paying rent and making sure there's enough money coming in. I even remember a day when the product that was spilled on the floor was worth more than I was going to earn that week. So yes, I understand how hard it is, because before coming to this place I had a varied business life, including another role as a small business lender. I went into businesses and learnt how they operated and where their pain points were and I got them the funding they needed. I used my own experience in business to understand what they needed and to help them get support to grow their businesses.

I bring that experience with me as I represent the great electorate of Melbourne. Melbourne has more than 56,000 small businesses and more than a dozen small business associations. I've been meeting with them since being elected, because, for the first time in 15 years, they've had a federal representative who can be their voice inside government—unlike others, who spend their time shouting from the sidelines. Having someone in government who knows the hard work they do means that small businesses in Melbourne have a direct voice into government, where decisions are made, rather than someone who is creating outrage just for the sake of it, turning that outrage into data harvesting. They have someone who gets the hard and rewarding work they do and is here to fight for them—and fighting for them looks like making the tax system work better and for small businesses and making it fairer.

The Albanese Labor government is making the $25,000 instant asset write-off permanent, giving small businesses certainty when they need to invest in new equipment. We are also making the two-year carry-back permanent, because anyone who's been in business knows they can have a good year followed by a bad year. Around 1.5 million sole traders will benefit from tax cuts, and this government is expanding capital gains tax concessions to all 2.7 million active small businesses. The government is making tax settings more useful for small businesses and giving owners more certainty. And it is happening at a time when there are more than 265,000 additional active small businesses in Australia than there were when this government was first elected in 2022.

Fighting for small business also looks like responsible economic management. This government has created 1.3 million jobs. We've had the lowest average unemployment of any government in half a century. This government knows how hard Australians work because Labor is a party of everyday Aussies. We are the party that stands up for small and family businesses and for the workers, because those two things are not separate. We know that when businesses succeed, workers succeed, and when workers are respected and paid properly, businesses grow and expand.

Unlike those opposite, this government is acting on behalf of all Australians. Unlike those on the sidelines, we are doing more than just arguing for the sake of arguing. We are getting on with delivering real change for everyday Aussies. I know what running a small business takes because I have done it. I know members across this government who have done it. This Labor government backs the people who run small businesses, the people who work in them and the people who walk through their doors. We are getting on with the work and making Australia fairer and stronger for everyone.

The previous member spoke about us on this side of the place arguing for the sake of arguing. I think that just tells this chamber and should tell every single Australian that those in the government have no grasp of the damage that is being done by this government and by this Treasurer's taxes on every single Australian small business and family business. Those on this side of the House have a very close familiarity with small business and with family business. We understand the sacrifice, the struggle and the opportunity cost that people have to take in order to put everything at risk, to employ people, to generate wealth and to create jobs in this country.

This motion moved by the Leader of the Opposition is key, and it is a matter of public importance because every single day that I'm in my electorate or here in Canberra, I have small-business owner after small-business owner, as I'm sure all my colleagues do—the member for Fisher as well—coming to us and saying: 'Things have gotten so tough in this country. It's so hard to run a business. The question is: why bother?' That is something that this chamber should be absolutely concerned about, because if we take out small and family businesses from this country, we have very little left.

We have a government and a prime minister who doesn't get it and a Treasurer who doesn't get it. We have seen backflip after backflip after backflip. Don't get me wrong; I'm happy that we've had those backflips because some of them were, quite frankly, terrible ideas. But if you look at the record, each and every one of these backflips shows that the government has no idea what they're doing. We saw it with the veterans' healthcare cap, the $5,000 cap that they had a change of heart on. They were forced to because the coalition brought so much public sentiment against them, and they backflipped. We've seen it with the ATO credit card ban—again, another backflip. We've seen it in part with the capital gains tax. There was a part retreat there because we had a massive social media campaign where investors and creators around this country said, 'What the hell is going on in Canberra?' Again, another part backflip. We're seeing budget tax measures watered down after being watered down.

And it's not just in this place. Look at what Labor's own mates are saying in other places. Look at the Premier of New South Wales. He has not been supportive at all of this government's economic management. He's got every reason not to be supportive, to be concerned and to distance himself from the Albanese Labor government.

Don't forget the Queensland disaster funding!

And Queensland disaster funding. That was another massive backflip which was going to deprive our state of the support that it needs at times when it needs it most, especially where I live on the Gold Coast, where we've had to access that in the past.

For today's matter of public importance, we should have the Minister for Small Business here. We should have the Minister for Small Business listening. We didn't get much out of her during question time; every single question, just about, seemed to be deferred to the Assistant Treasurer. But if we've got a small business minister who is not prepared to front up at the one part of the day, the one part of proceedings, where she's supposed to be accountable for her portfolio and for her actions, something is clearly wrong with this government.

Where are their priorities? I have no idea. This Minister for Small Business has spent $150,000 travelling the world. Those opposite will turn around and say, 'It's part of her portfolio.' But, while she did that, 800 small businesses went bust in this country—30 small businesses every single day that she was away. If her priorities are not to be addressing that significant issue in this country for small business then I think she needs to reconsider her role and I think the Prime Minister needs to reconsider her role.

We have a government that doesn't fundamentally understand small business. They don't understand the grit, the determination and the risks involved in starting and running a small business. What's even worse is they don't understand what they are doing to all of those hardworking Australians, including many on the southern Gold Coast, who have risked everything to create jobs and generate wealth in this country. I suggest they take a serious look at their policies and at themselves and reconsider if they're on the side of small business or not—because, quite frankly, I think they're not.

This government is very much on the side of small business. It has brought in billions of dollars in initiatives to help small businesses—making the $20,000 instant asset write-off permanent, ensuring that we're fixing regulations and getting rid of $10 billion in compliance costs and looking at the National Construction Code and ensuring that it is a more user-friendly, simple item after having paused it. That's because we need to not just be sticking with the status quo. We need to be making regulatory compliance simpler and more straightforward, cutting unnecessary red tape and making sure that we have user-friendly regulations that make compliance simple enough. That work has been continuing across the life of this government. We're doing it at pace now because we realise that productivity increases will depend on us having regulatory efficiency and easier-to-follow regulations as well.

Those opposite also talk about tax cuts for small businesses, forgetting that about 1.5 million small businesses are sole traders, all of which would have got the $250 worker bonus as well as every other beneficial tax cut for individual workers. Rather than that, they'll talk about a few niche issues, if anything at all. What we heard was a lot of personal attacks and some kind of amateur pop psychology about relationship dynamics, probably with not a lot of self-awareness tapped into there as well.

Small business also relies on a trained workforce, and that's why we're backing free TAFE—to make sure our economy has the skilled workforce it needs to be successful and to ensure that our migration program continues to serve the interests of our economy, rather than having the opposition's migration policy that, sadly, will be like a version of One Nation. We find that they have put at risk Victoria's economic future. International education is one of the most important industries in my home state. It creates thousands of jobs. It brings in billions of dollars in revenue. It is something upon which the Victorian economy is very, very reliant. But, just for the sake of a little bit of cheap populism, they decided to put all of that at risk. What's the point? To be a second-rate version of another populist party? Let One Nation be One Nation. Perhaps the Liberal Party should try going back to being responsible operators in this body politic, because right now what we're seeing is an attempt at populism that has managed to be unpopular. I can understand why they wag their finger around spending and then oppose every single spending cut. They can't afford to lose any more friends, so of course they have to be very, very careful. So they won't let the fact that it's rank hypocrisy get in the way of what they're doing. What they'll do is cry, 'You're spending too much. You must cut spending. Oh, but don't cut it that way. Don't cut it that way either.' They cannot make the tough decisions.

At this point in time, tough decisions are necessary. There is no way you can make the kinds of savings necessary to make sure that demand from the public sector is reduced and to ensure that we're doing everything we can to fight inflation without tough decisions. It does mean that we need to have the mettle to make tough calls, because there is no significant decision where there is no loser. It's hard, it is tough and we have genuine care and sympathy for everyone involved, but it's about taking responsibility. It is about making decisions that are in the best interests of Australia. It is about assessing alternatives and doing the work necessary to ensure that every cent we spend is spent as fairly, effectively and efficiently as possible. We don't let vibes dictate policy. We have to get the facts together. We have to consider the legitimate interests of a range of parties and then come to what is the most sensible policy prescription that is possible. Of course, the opposition aren't compelled to do that. It's all too easy.

They have to climb that ladder back up to relevance while hoping that someone will recognise one of their names, so they just have to jump on the crazy train. They have to jump on the outrage train and hope that that might get them some love back. Then we've got this situation where the Labor Party is left to be the only economically liberal party, the only fiscally responsible party and the only party for small business in this parliament, as well as the only people who still believe in free trade, strengthening our economy and making sure that we set ourselves up for a better tomorrow than yesterday, rather than simply looking upon yesterday with rose coloured glasses and hoping that we can go back. No. Setting Australia up for a brighter future means making intelligent and sometimes tough decisions in the national interests. It means doing what is right by the country, even if we have to take a political hit.

I noticed during question time that they're always pointing at the backbench and going, 'You're going to pay for this.' The truth is that sometimes we have to make calls while knowing that there is a political price to pay. It is not about us; it is about the Australian people. It is about doing what is right by Australians, even if it does carry a political cost. I'm incredibly proud to be part of a government that is taking on the challenges needed and setting Australia up for future success.

This discussion has now concluded.