Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

The government has created 900,000 new jobs? I do not know that there are 900,000 new public servants, because those are the only jobs that governments can actually create. Small business and medium-sized business and big business are the ones that create jobs. The jobs that the government creates are the 22,000 additional public servants, most of them in this lovely city. Those are the jobs the Labor government have created. We in the coalition understand that real job creation comes from small and medium-sized business. That is why you cannot keep creating real jobs, as opposed to Public Service jobs, while you keep imposing costs and regulations on small business.

I repeat: good luck to the Gillard government for removing one regulation. I am not sure when the next election is going to be these days. Ms Gillard said it was going to be on 14 September. There is press speculation and a lot of rumours around members of the Labor Party that it is now not going to be on that date, but of course the parliament has not been brought into those discussions. Those of us who, in our democracy, are supposed to be running the country will of course, as is usual with the Labor Party, be the last to know. If the election is to be held on 14 September, and if the Labor Party are to discharge the promise they made about repealing 21,000 pieces of regulation in their term, they have a lot of work to do in the next few weeks. We know of course that that will not happen.

The regulation being removed, as my colleague has said, enables regulations to be made to exempt certain representations from component-pricing requirements in the Australian Consumer Law. The amendment will allow regulations to be made to place restaurant and cafe menu surcharges for specific days outside the component-pricing requirements, which put simply means that you can have a different menu or a different pricing explanation on different days. That seems very sensible.

It is brought about because there are substantial penalties for those who work on weekends and at odd hours, and that is appropriate in many cases. It does not, of course, take into account that many people, particularly university students who study during the week, often want to get their jobs on the weekend. They look forward to employment on the weekend, because that is when they can earn a bit of cash to pay for whatever they need money for. Regrettably, with the legislation and regulations that have been around over many years, the numbers of jobs available on weekends is simply not what it used to be. So all of those jobs that used to be available for university students, and others who find that working on the weekend really suits them, are no longer as plentiful as they used to be.

Madam Acting Deputy President Stephens, you and I and many others have been to many seaside towns and tourist resorts where, when you walk along the main street on a Sunday, every second cafe is shut. Why? Because the small-business owners can simply not afford the staff to open them up. I was in Hervey Bay the other day with Keith Pitt, the excellent LNP candidate for Hinkler who will replace the long-serving Paul Neville—those are big shoes for Keith Pitt to fill, but I am sure he will do it—and we were talking to small-business men along the esplanade in Hervey Bay, and every second shop was shut down on the weekend, simply because they could not afford to open up on those days. So those jobs that used to be available to people who wanted to work on weekends in Hervey Bay are no longer available. That, I regret to say, is probably one of the reasons why there is unemployment in the Hervey Bay area. There should not be. Hervey Bay is a great place. It is the whale-watching capital of the world, with a great climate and great activities, and near Fraser Island; it is a magnificent place for people to go. But small business there, as it is everywhere in Australia, is struggling because of the regulation and cost of the things introduced by, first of all, the Rudd Labor government in 2007 and, more recently, the Gillard government.

Talking about competition and consumer affairs reminds me that small businesses are also very concerned with the duopoly of Coles and Woolworths. Coles and Woolworths obviously conduct legitimate businesses, and customers like using them. But they have an inordinate market power which producers, suppliers and wholesalers will tell you is not always appropriately used. That is why I am delighted that the coalition, as one of its core promises in the upcoming election campaign, is to conduct that root-and-branch review of the competition laws in Australia, to see what can be done to make it fairer for producers, farmers and small businesses to compete with Coles and Woolworths.

We now have a government led by Mr Rudd who will, no doubt, continue to promise to look after small business and reduce regulations. We all know, and Australians know, that Mr Rudd can be believed no more than Ms Gillard could be. We all remember Mr Rudd promising to end the blame game on health and hospitals, but what have we heard, consistently, on health and education and anything else that goes wrong under this dysfunctional government? It is all the fault of the states—they are the ones who do all the things for which the poor old Gillard and Rudd governments have been blamed! Well, everybody knows that that is a joke. Mr Rudd will continue to blame everybody else for his own failures as Prime Minister and then as a minister in Ms Gillard's government.

We know Mr Rudd well from Queensland. We remember when he, as a public servant, ran the Premier's office in Queensland. And you talk about dysfunctional governments there; you talk about how staff were always leaving the Department of the Premier and Cabinet in Queensland. It was because of the way Mr Rudd ran that office when he was in Queensland. It is easy to understand why one of Mr Rudd's colleagues, Mr Steve Gibbons, said, 'He is a psychopath with a giant ego.' It is very easy to understand that. It is very easy to understand why former minister Mr Craig Emerson, another Queenslander, who has known Mr Rudd not only in this parliament but when he was wielding the power in Queensland as the chief public servant in the Premier's office, said of Mr Rudd:

There has been attack on the Prime Minister—

that is, Gillard—

going back to the last election. There was destabilisation and leaking then; it's been going on since. … So if we're talking about attacking sitting prime ministers and destabilisation, I think Kevin—

and I think he meant Kevin Rudd—

should look in his own backyard because this has been going on for too long …

You will be aware, Madam Acting Deputy President Stephens, perhaps better than I, of how people who have worked with Mr Rudd have always been very critical of any promises he has made, of the way he runs his office and the way he has run his government. That is not my criticism, I hasten to add; it is criticism by people who have worked with Mr Rudd in his cabinet, next door to him, and continue doing so. So promises that Mr Rudd might make, like this promise to abolish one regulation for every new one created, the Australian people will no longer believe. It is time that this country got a government it can believe and trust. I look forward to the next election, whenever it is, so that Australia can get a decent, honest government again. But praise where praise is due—one regulation is gone with this bill. I support this bill, but there are 19,899 regulations to be abolished in the next few weeks. I will believe that when I see it.