Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2025-2026

Mr TIM WILSON (Goldstein) (10:53): When the Minister for Small Business can't even turn up to defend her legacy as the minister, when the previous speaker for the government couldn't even use the allotted time to defend the legacy of this government—you had your chance, Member for Deakin, but you couldn't even use your full time to defend the economic legacy of this government, particularly in terms of the importance of standing up for small business—it says something and speaks to something directly about this government, about where their priorities are.

Despite their boasts and despite their claims, the reality is Australians are living with the cost-of-living crisis—and, more importantly, small business is living with the cost-of-small-business crisis—that this government has delivered. That is why Australia right now has the largest number of insolvencies of small business in its history. We only need to look at why.

We have a consistent problem of inflation because this government continues to borrow from tomorrow to fuel today. We have a record number of jobs that are being created from public expenditure. Four out of five jobs are either directly created from public-sector jobs or by borrowing from tomorrow to pay for today to be able to keep numbers inflated.

But who pays that cost? Small businesses pay that cost—your inflated costs—that are being passed onto Australians, through high prices and therefore inflation and higher interest rates. Today's expenditure from tomorrow's debt means that Australians pay higher prices today and, more importantly, higher interest rates.

Small businesses are on the front line of this, and that's why they're experiencing record insolvencies. And the government is not their friend; the government is not doing anything to help. In fact, the Albanese government has declared war on small businesses, who simply want to get ahead and employ more Australians.

The absurdity of the situation is that, in this chamber and this parliament, when we had industries like the retail industry wanting to pay workers more, the government was motivated to pass laws so that they could keep the industrial relations system complex, to favour their union mates, to keep the cartel kickbacks going, so that the money would flow to their friends, at the expense of Australian workers.

It was done under the banner, they claimed, of making sure they secured penalty rates. In fact, there was only one penalty rate that was being applied, and it was to make sure that it was going to their union friends. But who was it being paid for by?

It was being paid for by Australian small businesses. Any pathway to simplicity—any pathway where there would be less cost on small business by making sure that they didn't have to have their own HR department, their own industrial relations department, their own tax advisers and their own lawyers, rather than that money going to wages and of course the opportunity for small businesses to actually get ahead and profit—was the demonised worst outcome for this government.

So it's a simple proposition that this government has no friends in small business because it is not a friend of small business. If you want a friend, you've got to be a friend. And this government is not a friend of small business.

It is continuing to wage its war on small businesses all across this country, because it is not prepared to listen or to understand the consequences of the legislation it is putting forward. Instead—we've said this many times before—it sees no small business, hears no small business and certainly doesn't speak to any small business, because, during the discussion around the penalty rates legislation, the minister couldn't answer a simple question: how many small businesses would be impacted?

We've now passed the legislation, and it's being implemented. She's given many speeches in the federal parliament crowing about her incredible achievement. She still can't answer that basic question: how many small businesses are impacted, Minister?

We'd love to know the answer. More importantly, how many small businesses are going to impacted by the soon-to-be changes that you're proposing around same-day payments on superannuation? I can give you a number.

It comes from a report from MYOB, who do the payroll systems for a large chunk of the country, Minister. If you'd care to go to page 9 of the report, called Securing Australia's Superannuation: MYOB submission, it says: This suggests that approximately 22.6% of businesses would be at risk of insolvency— from the government's legislation. So another simple question, Minister: how many small businesses will be made insolvent because of your proposed changes?

It's a simple question and one to which I've no doubt you can provide some sort of simple answer. Of course we know you won't, because you don't bother looking, because you haven't done the work. I know you've done sloppy, but we need you to actually step up.