Dave Sharma (NSW, Liberal Party) | Hansard source

Sorry; I didn't want to miss out on whatever the humour was.

When you've got a situation where the costs of this new set of regulations are quite clear and quite concentrated, and they will hit small business especially hard, but the harm that this bill is intending to prevent is unclear, unquantified and even on the best estimates significantly less than the costs that will be imposed, you would think this would be a time to pause. As I said, this is especially the case when small business faces the toughest environment it has in several decades. We've got small businesses reeling under the costs of higher energy—up 20 per cent under this government—electricity and gas; higher insurance because of inflation pushing up the costs of inputs; higher interest rates, with 12 successive rate rises pushing them four percentage points higher; complex industrial relations changes, with some 700-odd pages added to the Fair Work Act; difficult definitions for small businesses to interpret and manage around casual employees and the right to disconnect; and declining household disposable income, meaning consumers have less to spend on many small-business services.

We heard again in the chamber this week that household disposable income in Australia has been the worst performer amongst any OECD or advanced economy since the end of the pandemic. From the first quarter of 2022 till now, household disposable income is down by about eight per cent. So, if you're an average full-time earner on about $95,000 a year, you're taking home around $8,000 less in pay, which means you have $8,000 less to spend. Small businesses are feeling that. That is why we are seeing insolvency rates so high—five per cent across the small-business sector, as high as eight per cent in the hospitality sector and close to six per cent in the construction sector. COSBOA, the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia, has foreshadowed that those insolvency rates are likely to rise even higher.

Why are we rushing this piece of legislation through at this time when there is no urgency for action, when the costs of this piece of legislation are so large, when they're so concentrated, when it's small business that will be disproportionately impacted and feel the pinch of this, and when it's accounting practices, small law firms and real estate agents that will be hit? Many of them are already grappling with complex industrial relations changes. Accountants, for instance, only just avoided having a whole new set of requirements imposed upon them which would have added to the regulatory burden and which many on the coalition side fought against. When all this is happening and small businesses are facing the perfect storm in many respects, why are we rushing this piece of legislation through, when the case is not well made? Why are we putting this impost on small businesses which will ultimately feed through to their employees, the families they support and the communities they support—the sports teams they sponsor and the community organisations they invest in? Why are we doing that when the case for these changes has not been well made?

There has been stakeholder reaction not only from industry groups—of course, they would speak how you'd expect them to—but from groups like COSBOA that looks after small businesses across the country and like the Real Estate Institute. You can look at the overseas experience in New Zealand. You can hear the Law Council of Australia urging that this amendment to this legislation should be better designed, should have better consultation, should take into account the impost that it's likely to have and should provide businesses with some guidance about how they are potentially meant to meet these massive costs of compliance.

This is, at the worst possible time, another attack on small business by the Albanese Labor government. It's at a time when the economy is reeling, when small business is suffering, when households—many of whom are small-business owners—are under pressure and when businesses in hospitality are failing at a rate of about one in 12 and businesses in the construction sector are failing at a rate of about one in 16. When things are getting worse, why are we rushing this piece of legislation through, putting this impost upon them and making their lives and those of many Australians so much harder?