STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS

Ms McKENZIE (Flinders) (13:50): We have been talking intensely about small businesses this week—about the policies this government has introduced into this place that crush small business. Whether they're policies in taxation, policies in industrial relations or wages policy, energy policy, fuel policy or environmental policy, this government has waged a war on small business structures, their assets, their ability to employ people and their ability to grow.

This week I have been meeting with small businesses each and every day in the parliament, as I do each and every day in my own electorate—the textile industry, the horticultural industry, the community-banking industry and, last night, businesses across the spectrum at the Council of Small Business Organisations dinner. I've heard their fears for the future, but I've also heard about their extraordinary adaptability, their innovation and their determination to survive.

They can't understand why this government, with equal determination, is trying to destroy them. On this side of the chamber, small business is in our blood. It's what we do, and it's what we did before we came into this place.

Unless you have lived that life, waking up at 4 am wondering how you're going to pay the next tax bill, how you're going to meet the subbie's invoice on time, how you're going to afford to buy that next big piece of machinery that you need or how you're going to pay your accountant or your lawyer—even though you ain't slept much, you get up and you do it all over again each and every day.

None of you on that side have it in your gut, and that is the difference between you and us.