Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator O'Sullivan for the question. The Morrison government well and truly believes and acknowledges that small and family businesses are the backbone of the Australian economy. Since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have provided to them and other businesses around Australia unprecedented economic and health support. What we're now seeing is Australians well and truly stepping up and backing small and family businesses around the country by backing and supporting our national framework for reopening. Australians—and you can see this every day, as Senator Colbeck tells us—are putting their arms out and getting vaccinated, and we see that reflected in the vaccination rates every day, because Australians understand that vaccination is the key to reopening and is the key, as set out by national cabinet, to ending the lockdowns and ensuring that businesses across Australia—in particular our small and family businesses—again have the confidence that they need.

In the Morrison government, we continue to put in place those policies which will help our small and family businesses. You would have seen today that we have announced that we are now providing additional support to small and medium businesses around Australia who continue to deal with the economic fallout and the economic impacts of COVID-19. What we are doing is expanding eligibility for the Small and Medium Enterprise Recovery Loan Scheme. What we are doing now is removing the requirements for SMEs to have received JobKeeper during the March quarter in 2021 or to have been flood affected in order to be eligible for this scheme. This is a good thing for those businesses, and what it shows is that we are continuing to put in place those policies that will back our businesses around Australia every step of the way.