Small business plays a crucial role in the Australian economy. According to the Small business data report: 2023 year in review, approximately 42 per cent of private sector employment is in the small business sector. Small business adds one-third of gross value. It accounts for 97½ per cent of all businesses, roughly 2½ million, and it generates $500 billion of economic activity. That’s a third of Australia’s gross domestic product. They are big numbers. They are impressive figures. And we should, as the member for Chisholm has just stated, do everything we can to help small business. And I hear, hear, hear from the member for Moreton. He knows how important small business is in his Queensland community.
Last week, we heard—and we welcomed, indeed—the member for Chifley, the Minister for Industry and Science, saying that small businesses need some tax relief—some more tax relief, in fact. He said that the corporate tax rate should be lowered. He’s not here this week. Maybe he’s been sent for reprogramming by the Treasurer, who I’m not quite sure totally agreed with the member for Chifley’s assessment of where the corporate tax rate is or should be, but no doubt the member for Chifley will consider the error of his ways when he goes against the member for Rankin. I say that very facetiously; I wouldn’t want people to think I don’t believe the corporate tax rate should be lowered, because when I was the small-business minister back in 2016 the small-business tax rate went down to its lowest level in 70 years. I was very proud of that.
As I just said—and the member for Chisholm agreed in her contribution—we should do everything we can to support, to promote and to enhance small business because it’s small-business people who take the risk. It’s small-business people who open the doors, who pay the rent, who pay the wages. Now they’re having to pay even more wages after the announcement this week by the Fair Work Commission that wages are to go up by 3¾ per cent. No-one denies workers should be paid their dues, but it comes on the back of small business; they then have to find, in a cost-of-living crisis, more to pay their workers. What do they do? Do they put the price of their products up? Do they put the cost of their services up? Who ultimately pays for that? It’s the consumer, the customer. Someone has to pay. Whether it’s superannuation or wages, it’s that small-business operator—that person who often pays their employees first, as they should; who puts away money for their superannuation, as they should; and who often gets paid less in small business than the person they employ to help run their shop. I pay tribute and credit to those small-business operators. They are risk-takers. In many cases—that is, farmers—they are price-takers, not price-makers, and they are certainly risk-takers because they operate on the smell of an oily rag. They operate on the whim of the weather gods. They operate on whether or not there are going to be good times in the economy.
We’re talking about payment times reporting. Indeed, anything that can be done to ensure payment times are what they should be has got to be considered very much on its merit and very much supported by the coalition. But let’s just consider the 4 June Daily Telegrapheditorial, which was headed, ‘Insolvencies are climbing and could send NSW broke’. Luke Achterstraat was the co-writer of this; he is the chief executive officer of the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia, so when he speaks we ought to listen. It was co-authored by Denita Wawn—someone very well known to me—the CEO of Master Builders Australia. And she and he, like the good member for Chifley, bell the cat. He calls for a lower corporate tax rate. They, in a very what could be called grim article, wrote about the shocking insolvency figures released just last week detailing the crisis facing small business in my home state of New South Wales:
ASIC’s latest insolvency statistics provides the horrid figure of almost 4000 NSW businesses going bust in the year to date—
That’s what they wrote; that was the second sentence in that very alarming article—
Business insolvencies in NSW are now up 61 per cent year on year.
In the same week the NSW government has set ambitious housing targets to be met, the sobering news is construction industry insolvencies are up 111 per cent from this time last year.
And we have a housing minister who talks about increasing the housing stock. I don’t necessarily disagree with her, but, when you’ve got state governments shutting down gas, when you’ve got state governments like Victoria stopping the timber industry, I wonder how this is going to be met by the housing industry when they are trying to power homes, when they are trying to construct homes. What in goodness knows name will they be building houses out of if they can’t use Australian timber? What we’ll do is we’ll import it. We’ll just rape and pillage rainforests overseas to get the timber we need to build houses to accommodate the numbers of migration, which are just not sustainable. The numbers are just not sustainable. In fact, in January and February alone, we welcomed—and I do use the word ‘welcomed’—more than 100,000 new citizens in each of those months, as part of the overseas migration intake. That number is equivalent to the yearly total of migrants during the Howard era. This comes on the back of a cost-of-living crisis. This comes on the back of a housing crisis.
Ms Rishworth: Plenty of people, though, are here temporarily.
Mr McCORMACK: Sure. I don’t disagree with the minister at the table, but it still is a truism that we are importing record numbers of people, and they are staying mainly on the eastern seaboard, where 85 per cent of Australians live. They are not taking up the offers of employment or accommodation in regional Australia. Regional Australia—which carried this nation, by the way, during COVID—
Mr Hogan: All the time, not just COVID.
Mr McCORMACK: Indeed, but particularly during COVID. I take that, Member for Page—all the time.
Ms Rishworth: You’re just having a conversation.
Mr McCORMACK: We have great conversations, let me tell you. Unlike the caucus of the Labor Party, we actually get along.
Indeed, regional Australia is carrying this nation, but never more so than during COVID. Small businesses in regional Australia are doing it tough. As this Daily Telegraph editorial by the two authors I mentioned earlier states:
We are clearly not doing enough to support those doing it tough. Legislating housing targets is one thing but ensuring builders can remain in business and deliver on these targets is another. Recent building approval figures for NSW show over the last 12 months less than 45,000 homes were approved, well below the 75,000 required each year.
That’s just New South Wales. It doesn’t take into account Queensland or Victoria, where there is so much pressure on the housing markets, as there is right across the nation. As Luke and Denita point out:
The ASIC figures also reveal very few industries were left untouched. Retail industry insolvencies are up 31 per cent year on year.
Thirty-one per cent, Deputy Speaker. They go on:
The stakes are extremely high, with 850,000 small businesses in NSW employing 1.7 million people and paying annual wages of almost $70bn.
But what did we get during the recent budget? Well, we got 36,000 more public servants. That’s what we got. Someone’s got to pay for those too. Taxes will pay for those—taxes paid by small businesses, taxes paid right across the board. The editorial says:
We seem to have forgotten that a future plan for Australia starts with empowering the entrepreneurs willing to risk their own capital.
We need to ensure red tape is reduced rather than increased to help small businesses survive.
That is so very true. They add:
Too many government measures are only adding to the fatigue of small business owners.
For instance, from 1 January all small cafes and restaurants will be required to label the origin of each seafood item on its menu.
While this might make business sense for luxury establishments, it means more cost and red tape for mum-and-dad fish-and-chip shops selling seafood baskets and marinara pizzas.
The NSW Small Business Commissioner has estimated costs of over $2800 for a small-business owner to physically alter printed menus.
It’s just another bit of bureaucracy, just another bit of red tape, brought to you by a Labor government.
Mr Perrett: Supporting Australian aquaculture!
Mr McCORMACK: That’ll be the day! This bill seeks to achieve several outcomes. It’s going to create a mechanism to permit the Minister for Small Business to direct an entity found to be in the slowest 20 per cent of payers overall or by industry to make enhanced disclosures to the regulator. It is also going to name and shame. It’s going to permit the minister to direct a slow-paying entity to state in public-facing materials that it is a slow small business payer, provide information on how to access its payment times reports and allow the regulator to record in the register that an entity is a slow small business payer.
There may be any number of reasons, good and bad, for a business to be tardy in paying its bills. Does it deserve to be named and shamed? According to the government, yes. The Payment Times Reporting Amendment Bill is going to expand the functions of the regulator to include research, publishing and outreach with respect to payment outcomes, update the objects of the act to reflect the purpose of improving payment outcomes for small businesses, incentivise large businesses to make prompt payments, streamline reporting obligations and decrease the regulatory burden experienced by reporting entities. It will also enable consolidated reporting in accordance with Australian accounting standards to improve the quality, completeness and comparability of data reported on the register, so it is going to be more onerous on small businesses.
Whilst the coalition supports the measures this bill contains, we need to remember that in everything we do in this place that there are people out there who are doing it really tough. There are small business operators who are finding it very difficult to keep opening their doors and to keep the lights on. That’s not just because their power bills are going through the roof, but because of the red tape and bureaucracy that this Labor government seems to always want to foist on small businesses.
Not many of those opposite—a few, I will admit and agree—have actually run a small business. Many of them have actually run picket lines out the front of businesses, but not many of them have actually operated a small business. I have, I know, and it’s tough. I know the member for Page has run a successful business. We come to this place with that knowledge, expertise and skin in the game. We’ve put own hard earned on the line to build a better local economy and to help our families—at the end of the day, that’s first and foremost.
This government is doing so much to impede and hamper small business smoothness and efficiency. I will acknowledge the work being done by Bruce Billson, a former small business minister, heading up the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman’s Office. Small businesses should go to ASBFEO and have a look at what they have available on their website, because it is fast, it’s knowledgeable and it will help a small business operate in these difficult times, in these trying circumstances. It will help them with tax and it will help them navigate their way through the various acts, and it is to be encouraged and admired.
I worry about small business. I worry about the fact that unions are dictating the terms to this government, as you would expect. There’s always a payday when a Labor government is elected because they’ve got to pay back their union masters. They’ve got to pay back those who pull the strings. They are mere puppets of the trade union movement, and that only affects and impedes and slows small businesses across Australia, who need every bit of help from this disappointing government.