Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Terrific. I am glad that you acknowledge that, because I was talking about you before, my friend, when I said: we have never pretended to be a small business party—the Labor Party of which you are a member, Senator Campbell. I am not attributing something to you that you are not part of. You are part of the Australian Labor Party and that is what was said. You have never pretended to be a small business party.

But small business does remember 22 per cent interest rates plus, as do those whose businesses that were marginal, paying upwards of 24 or 25 per cent. That was your legacy to small business. Your other legacy to small business was high inflation. But the best legacy you gave to small business, which you have reintroduced in your so-called changes to IR in relation to small business, is the proposal that you keep those unfair dismissal laws which have destroyed small business in this country.

In the last 15 months there have been close to 410,000 jobs created in this country—some 86 per cent plus of which are full-time jobs. As for the comments of the Australian Labor Party that this is all in the mining sector, that is absolute bunkum. A substantial amount of this new employment has been driven by the renewed confidence of the small business sector in their ability to hire. That has been directly responsible for the enormous job growth. You gave this country part-time work and 18 per cent unemployment. We have given this country in the last 15 months an extra 400,000 jobs and an unemployment rate of 4.3 per cent.