BUSINESS

Ms BELL (Moncrieff) (12:12): I second the motion. I feel compelled by my community of small business on the Gold Coast. There are over 80,000 of them on the Gold Coast alone that employ locals, that support community, that are getting thwacked over the head yet again by this god-awful Labor government who is assaulting their aspiration.

Small businesses around the country are aghast at this measure. I absolutely wholeheartedly support the member for Goldstein with this motion because the small-business minister from the other side of the chamber has absolutely no idea about what it is that small businesses need. Yesterday she was flailing around in the dark like all of those small businesses who have gone broke under Labor's watch.

She was flailing away in the dark in question time. She didn't have the answers to whether it was the ATO or whether it was the RBA that made this decision. When she found out, she didn't know the answers to the most basic questions about small business.

I'm sure that the minister has never, not once, filled in the forms—does she even know what the forms are called?—that you have to fill in every month or perhaps every quarter if you're a small business. She has no idea what it takes to open a small or family business. This change that Labor don't know about, apparently, is going to create cash flow restraints.

For those who don't understand Business 101, in the first lecture when you're studying business, when you're doing a business degree, the first rule of business is to make money. You've got to make money, Minister. Part of making money is having enough cash flow to be able to pay your suppliers, because if you don't pay your suppliers, you don't get your stock, and if you don't have your stock, you can't sell it to your consumers and you can't make money—again, the first rule of business.

So my message to the Minister for Small Business is clear. You cannot take away every single lever that small business has, including the ability to pay your bill on your credit card through the ATO. You cannot take away every single lever that small business has to make money.

Why does small business have to make money? It's pretty simple. It's livelihoods.

It's Australian livelihoods. Thirty small businesses a day—30 small businesses every single day—are going broke under this woeful government and under this woeful small-business minister. I ask the government to stop punishing small business.

There is a limit to how much tax small and family businesses can pay. You are sending them broke. I have small businesses all around me all the time.

I come from small business. I can tell you that when a bakery owner is telling me his revenue has gone down by 30 per cent and his costs have gone up by 30 per cent, he is falling into my arms, crying his eyes out, because he knows he is going to have to sack everybody in his organisation and close up shop. That is under this small-business minister's watch and under this Prime Minister's watch.

I have coffee shops telling me that they actually make money on a public holiday. They make money when they close. It is ridiculous.

All of those people who work in small and family businesses need to work. If coffee shops close on a public holiday because penalty rates are too high and electricity costs are too high, and now because they have no cash flow to pay their suppliers, they can't order coffee beans—what is this government thinking? This is a small-business minister with zero experience, as outlined by her backbench.

By her own backbenchers' admissions, she has no experience whatsoever in small business. Shame on this Labor government. They need to be backing in small business.

They need to stop this credit card ban and allow small and family businesses to have the cash flow that they need to make money. The first rule of business: make money so you can employ Australians; make money so you can employ families across the Gold Coast and across the entire country. We're talking about millions and millions of Australians who are employed by small business.

This minister and this Prime Minister should be absolutely shamed and stoned in the square.