Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) | Hansard source

Sorry, Senator Ayres, if you wouldn't mind, it's Christmas. In the spirit of that, the other day, I went and bought some red ribbon. It cost me a couple of bucks a roll. I like to wrap my presents with red and white paper. I put red ribbon around them, and I've got the lovely red and white tags. I'm actually a bit OCD, and my lovely Christmas tree and all the wrapping underneath need to match, and everything looks pretty. I get very upset when everyone turns up with an unexpected present with paper that doesn't match. But little did I know of the bargain I was getting for $3 a role for this red ribbon. None of these small businesses across Australia—accounting businesses, real estate businesses, lawyers—are going to get a $3 lot of red ribbon. They're going to get a $33,000 bill of red tape—$33,000 a year. So Merry Christmas from the Albanese government to these small businesses! At a time when we are seeing the most insolvencies ever of Australian businesses, this government has absolutely no clue when it comes to running a business. They genuinely think that somehow their job creation, because they've employed more public servants, is growing the economy. It's not the public service that grows the economy, people; it's small business. It's medium businesses. It's companies that employ people that the economy grows from, not employing people on the public purse.

But we know no-one over on that side—I vaguely remember that, I think, Senator Chisholm once had a job outside of a union, but no-one else over there has ever had a job in the private sector. They've always worked as union reps, union officials and political staffers and have absolutely no concept of what it is like to run a small business and what costs every small business has when it goes to its accountant and every business has when it has to deal with its lawyers. A lot of these small businesses, family businesses, use accountants and lawyers who themselves are running small businesses. Whilst it's the lawyers and the accountants and the real estate agents who are going to see the $33,000 hit to their bottom line directly, those businesses that are managing to survive and can sustain through this are going to have to pass those costs on. So who's going to pay for it? It's going to be the small and family businesses who are the clients of these lawyers and accountants and real estate agents—$33,000.

If this wasn't sounding bad enough—now, I may get the pronunciation wrong, but I think the Macquarie word of the year is 'enshittification'. It's when things keep getting worse. Enshittification means that situations continue to decline. This government is subjecting our economy to enshittification every single day, because our economy is getting worse every single day. Conditions are 'enshittified'—I don't know if I can use that word. I may have made up a new word! These businesses are struggling more and more every single day to keep their doors open, to keep people employed and to keep operating. Now they're going to be hit with even further costs.

If we're surprised by the 31 bills they're jamming through today—some of them have been on the books for not only months but years. They've done no work on them. There's no detail, and they're once again guillotining bills through this place, so there'll be no proper review. Unintended consequences, here we come, yet again. But in order to get this guillotine, in order for them to ram through this number of bills, the cost to the Australian taxpayer today is half a billion dollars. They have done a dirty deal with their mates up at the end of the chamber, worth half a billion dollars, to get them to support a guillotine, to shut down debate and to stop there being reviews of legislation.

Mr Albanese, the Prime Minister, keeps saying that we're going to an election in May and that he's going to go full term. He says there'll be no early election; it's going to be a full term. So why do we need 31 bills rammed through today? Why do they need to be done today? We're back in February.