QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Dr ALY (Cowan—Minister for Small Business, Minister for International Development and Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (15:02): I thank the member for Chisholm for her question. She's a real champion for small businesses in her electorate, as are all of my colleagues here behind me for their electorates. Despite difficult global and domestic conditions, average monthly new company registrations are higher under this government than any other government on record.
Our government is the only government to record more than 40,000 businesses being registered in a single month, and that's actually happened twice this year. ASIC data shows that, since the Albanese Labor government came to office, more than 1.4 million new companies have been registered, averaging more than 27,490 every single month. This is almost 35 per cent higher than the average under the former government, and more than 2½ times what was recorded under the Howard government.
An average of 900 companies have been created each day of this Labor government. Now, that's not to say and that doesn't take away from the fact that small businesses are doing it tough. We know they are.
Costs are higher. Margins are thinner. But it does tell a story.
It tells a story of ambition and confidence, the kind of ambition and confidence we want to see more of and we want to back. When I talk to small-business owners, they tell me they want the confidence to be able to plan ahead and they want the confidence to be able to invest. They want to be able to find and keep the right people in their businesses.
They want less time tied up in unnecessary and burdensome red tape. Above all, they want a government to make it easier for them to do their job, and that's exactly what we're doing. We've made the $20,000 instant asset write-off permanent so that businesses can invest in the tools that they need without having to wait each year to see if it'll be extended.
We've introduced the two-year loss carry-back to help businesses manage those difficult periods and get back on track. We're delivering $10.2 billion a year in regulatory burden reduction through our reform agenda. The government's job is to help businesses to start, to survive, to grow and to employ more Australians and to create more opportunities in communities right across Australia.
But I'm asked what the risk to this is, and that risk is lack of certainty, it's chaos, and it's lack of policy. They don't need politicians pretending they care while simultaneously talking down the skilled migrants that help them as they race to the bottom in an irresponsible game of who can dog whistle louder. They need a government that listens.
(Time expired)