BUSINESS

Mr TIM WILSON (Goldstein) (12:01): I move: That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Goldstein from introducing the Taxation Administration Amendment (Reinstating Credit Card Payments) Bill 2026 immediately. We have a farce at the heart of this country right now where the government does not know in what direction it is heading.

It turns around and says to the Australian community that it's going to introduce a credit card surcharge ban. We then have a real and human impact, particularly for those who own small businesses, who say there's a cost to them. We have travel agents highlighting the huge cost and the disruption it is going to cause to their small businesses.

We have independent schools saying they can no longer accept credit card payments as a consequence of the government's decision. Childcare operators are following suit. And the government's response at every point is to turn around and tell the small businesses of this country: 'You must absorb this cost.

You have to take on higher costs at a time of declining profitability, record insolvencies and record numbers of small businesses closing the door.' There is no empathy from this government. They have no interest in the impact their decisions are having on the small-business community of the nation. I'm going to come back to that, Speaker—because it's not a prop.

It's called a copy of the Australian Financial Review, and it shows the cascading series of errors that have flowed. What is even more extraordinary, now that we know exactly what the impact of the government's surcharge ban is, is that there is absolutely no clarity from the government about what is going to happen next. And then the Australian Taxation Office comes along and says: 'Hold our surcharge beer.

We are going to introduce a ban on credit cards for Australians who pay their tax liabilities that way'—as is lawful and as many Australians, particularly small businesses, currently do to manage temporary issues around cash flow and as a form of interest-free overdraft. It applies particularly to the tradies, the sparkies and the chippies of the nation. An opposition member: Plumbers.

Mr TIM WILSON: And plumbers. The Australian Taxation Office says: 'We're not going to absorb this additional cost that the government is expecting from hundreds of thousands of small businesses across the country. We're not going to do that, so we're just going to ban the payment method.' And they did it with eight hours notice.

I do not know if I have ever seen a government decision that has been so incompetently administered as this credit card ban by the ATO. But wait! You just needed to wait and see how the government responded.

At first, everyone was backing it. The member for Parramatta was saying: 'No, we support the government's decision. We'd back it in 100 per cent of the way, and the ATO's right on this.' Then, all of a sudden, I think it was the Minister for Housing who turned around and said: 'Actually, we're quite concerned about this.

This isn't going to end well.' Maybe she was hearing from some of the chippies who help build houses or finish them. She claims she had a background in small business, so she had some appreciation of this mysterious thing for the Albanese government that they call cash flow. Then, of course, we had—we've had so many different ones!—the Minister for Small Business.

When she finally figured out there was a surcharge ban—trust me, we'll return to that one, too—and there was this credit card ban implemented, she also raised some concerns. But don't worry. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, when she was asked about it, said, 'We'd like to do something, but we don't have the power.' Opposition members interjecting— Mr TIM WILSON: I accept the audible gasps from the members behind me!

If it weren't so absurd, on something so serious, it would be laughable. The government was out there, remember? The Prime Minister was out there with a picture of his credit card on his social media, talking about how they'd implemented this ban and they had something to be proud of.

They really wanted to own the decision until they realised the consequences and they turned around and said: 'Oh, we can't fix this now. We take ownership of it, but we can't actually fix it.' So the Minister for Foreign Affairs says that the government has no power to correct it. Well, the Leader of the Opposition and we on the opposition benches decided, 'If you don't have the power to fix it, we'll give you the power to fix it.' Then, presto!

All of a sudden, the Treasurer was able to! He was the action man coming out and saying, 'I'm going to extend Australians being able to pay bills to the Australian Taxation Office by credit card for another 12 months.' This mysterious power they didn't have—they didn't have the levers to advance the interests of Australian small business—like presto, it suddenly appeared.

Considering their history and the deceit and dishonesty that this government has consistently tried to get away with, this is another changed position. We've seen so many of these examples, like saying 50 times before the election they were not going to introduce higher and more taxes on small business, and then getting elected and doing so. They didn't have the power to overturn the ATO credit card ban.

Now they do. We're just going to remove doubt for all time by simply making an amendment to the relevant legislation to confirm and to absolve the concerns of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and, of course, all the other members on the other side of this chamber present, that indeed the Treasurer does have the power and that the ATO will have the capacity to accept tax bills through credit card payments.

We will make sure that, where Australians have to pay tax to an entity that has a legal monopoly, they actually are able to use different payment methods—you know, kind of like small businesses have to do. What we simply want is to make sure that, if you're a small business and you're part of the economy and you're paying your tax, you're able to do it on terms that work for you.

Whether it's your GST, whether it's the PAYG, whether it's withholding or whether it's income tax, or whatever mechanism it is, you can decide how best to manage your cash flow, and the government doesn't make the decision for you. There are so many small businesses right now across this country that are struggling to stay alive. They're looking for cash flow.

Their revenue is down. As I said before, we have record insolvencies and plenty more just closing the door. Many businesses have profitability margins of one or two per cent.

And, despite what the Minister for Small Business says, it isn't because 'maybe they're dodgy'; it's actually because this government has created economic conditions which have made it hard for them to survive. We saw in the last federal budget that the answer from the Albanese government from on high was to turn around and say: 'We've got a solution to your crisis of confidence.

We've got a solution to the problems of declining revenue and collapsing consumer and small-business confidence. We're going to chuck more taxes on the small businesses of this country.' This isn't just an attack on small business, to be clear; this is an attack on community, because small business is the lifeblood of community. They are the first people to give a young Australian a job and a foothold on the ladder of economic opportunity.

The Labor Party used to claim they believed in that. They clearly don't believe in it any more. They're also the first commercial entity that goes along and donates to and supports local footy clubs, local cricket clubs and local netball clubs.

They're the first to give a hand out and back them in. We're going to back them in. We're going to make sure that there's a full pathway for the consequences of this government's surcharge ban, that people actually have accountability within the government, and that they can then be called to account.

We need a government that takes responsibility because what we've seen successively, particularly under this Treasurer, is that the government doesn't seem to have any idea of the consequences of the decisions that they're making. This is no longer an opinion; you just need to read John Kehoe's article in the Australian Financial Review today: 'According to government sources, some senior members were not aware that shares, businesses and other assets would be captured until the day' that their new tax was introduced from their budget.

The government had no idea what was going on. We know full well that we had continual problems where the government's only answer has been politics. One source said: I don't think there's so much a failure of policy, but a failure of politics.

Well, I've got news for you. When you think about everything through the lens of politics and not the lens of policy, you're putting Australians last. That's the problem.

I didn't even get to the Minister for Small Business. We have the incompetent being led by the blind. Yesterday she confirmed she didn't even know that this ban was coming into place.

This is the problem, and that's why this legislation must pass.