I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The Albanese Government's staggering incompetence in pretending that banning credit card surcharges eliminates transaction costs, when those costs are merely hidden from consumers or passed on through higher prices, while the Australian Taxation Office refuses to absorb those same costs and instead plans to stop accepting credit cards, exposing how utterly clueless Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers are about running a small business.

Just when you think the Albanese government couldn't possibly demonstrate any greater ignorance as to how a small business in Australia runs, along comes the Prime Minister and the Treasurer of Australia, and yet again we are proved wrong. As a small-business owner said to me on the weekend, and I have no doubt that they were expressing the views of so many small-business owners across Australia, you cannot script this—insert your own expletive—show! These two economic geniuses, our prime minister and our treasurer, seem to now believe that they have discovered a new revolutionary principle of economics. It's this: if you ban a credit card surcharge, apparently the cost of processing that transaction simply disappears. Brilliant! So why is it that Australian small-business owners didn't think of this years and years ago? That would be because Australian small-business owners live in the real world. They wake up every day in the real world and they are smarter, without any doubt in terms of running a small business, than the Prime Minister of Australia and—God help them!—our hapless treasurer.

They understand that you're not waving a magic wand and suddenly these costs disappear. They understand that the processing costs don't disappear. The banks are still charging them. Somebody still has to pay them. And that's really worked out well for this government, hasn't it? At this point in time, the government have made this very clear to small business: 'We've hidden the cost. You can't charge it. You still have to actually pay the bank for the processing fee, and you will have to absorb it.'

You could not script, though, the fact that the ATO, the Australian Taxation Office, a government department, then came out themselves and said: 'Oh, good God! Well, the cost of absorbing these processing fees is so high that we are now going to ban credit card payments.' You could not script that if you tried. What did Mr Albanese and the Treasurer do? They smiled at the ATO and said, 'Well, you can have it your way?' And they looked at small-business owners, the men and women of Australia who get up every single day and do what we need in this country—run a small business, take risk and employ people—and said: 'It's bad news for you. You have to absorb it.'

Small-business owners are now saying, 'Well, that's great, but the bad news is this: we'll have to close down in some cases, which means our employees will lose their jobs.'

A business that has to close employs no-one. Sadly, Mr Albanese doesn't seem to understand that small fact. And here is the alternative. So much for Mr Albanese's cost-of-living measure, because what did other businesses say? 'Well, you know now what we're going to have to do: we will increase our costs.' So that coffee that was costing you $5.12 is now costing you $5.50, is now costing you $5.80. That is how quite frankly stupid this government is when it comes to understanding how small businesses in this country run.

Perhaps the Prime Minister and Mr Chalmers should just try running a corner shop for one week. On second thought, they probably shouldn't. And do you know why? This is how it would go. On Monday they'd have to hire three consultants to tell them how to actually open the front door to the business. By Tuesday they would have established a committee to understand why nobody was coming into their business. On Wednesday they would have introduced a new tax on customers coming into the business. On Thursday they would have said, 'Well, this isn't going well,' and then they would have looked to blame the previous owners. By Friday their small business, based on their record and their total and utter lack of understanding of how a small business in this country operates, would be bankrupt. The employees would be out of work. But guess what. The Treasurer would be there, holding the press conference, looking the Australian people in the eye and telling them how well everything was going.

Well, it's not going well for small businesses in this country. They deserve a government that understands the difference between running a business and running a press conference, and it is quite time the Prime Minister and the Treasurer started to understand that.