MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Ms ALDRED (Monash—Opposition Whip) (16:05): I am someone who's really passionate about small and family run businesses. I grew up in one, and it's a great privilege to represent people who get out of bed every morning and put their house on the line to give other people a shot at a job. They're the first people in our community to put their hand up and sponsor everything from the local footy and netball teams to the food bank.
They volunteer in our service clubs. And I tell you what, they deserve so much better and so much more than what they're being served up by this Labor government right now. I think 'rambling' must have been in the talking points, because I've heard it in a few contributions by my good friends on the other side of the chamber this afternoon.
Well, if you want to see rambling, you should have seen the ACCI speech delivered by the Prime Minister earlier this week. It was like the dodgem cars at the Melbourne Royal Show; it was just banging into everything in sight. It went from one corner to the other.
It was a range of pointless lines delivered by the Prime Minister. But the real kicker—my good friend the member for Nicholls is nodding at this—was, I thought, the gratuitous humiliation of the Treasurer. I actually felt kind of sorry for him.
I thought he deserved better from his leader than the way he was thrown under the bus in a gratuitous way. It was embarrassing and humiliating. I thought he deserved a lot better than what he got at that ACCI dinner.
And this week there's been clean up in aisle eight ever since. I'm going to raise some examples of the impost and the impact of this Treasurer's taxes on family run and small businesses in my electorate, because they are really suffering right now. They're really suffering from the price of input costs going up.
I visited a transport company with the Leader of the Opposition a fortnight ago in my electorate. That fellow is paying $40,000 a fortnight in fuel. Everything is going up across the board.
We visited a local food bank, and they are having thousands of people come through their doors because. These are people who are doing it really rough, who are sleeping rough, who are homeless, but these are also people who are fully employed, who are working two or more jobs. They cannot keep pace with their mortgage repayments.
They cannot keep up with their rent under this government. But let me run you through a few examples from my electorate. Just today, actually, I had an accountant from South Gippsland who had four clients today alone who have had to seek assistance in restructuring due to this Treasurer's trust changes.
She says the cost is huge and, while changes can be made, it will cause massive disruption and leave them wide open with no protections in place. Another example I want to raise is a constituent from Loch, also in South Gippsland. A cafe owner contacted my office frustrated that that all levels of government—the member for Nicholls and I are passionate Victorians—and that state and federal Labor governments right now are just smashing small businesses.
This fellow said he simply cannot work any harder or continue to absorb spiralling costs. He believes he will have no choice but to increase his prices by seven to eight per cent, passing on those costs to customers. He purchased his cafe three years ago with a 10-year business plan and he questions why he should take all the financial risk, work the long hours and build a successful business only to potentially pay 47 per cent in capital gains tax when he eventually sells.
I also want to raise the example of a fellow who's very well-known to many Gippslanders and indeed many people right across Australia, and that's Jason Bargwanna, also known as Bargs in the Gippsland region. He's a former Bathurst 1000 winner. He contacted me about the fuel assistance scheme.
He operates Gippsland Couriers in Warragul in West Gippsland. His weekly fuel bill increased from $9,000 to $10,000 per week. He's been mucked around by the federal government's Economic Resilience Program, mucked around by the Treasurer.
He's got 40 staff and a belief in employing local people and putting back into the local community. But right now Jason Bargwanna, a champion in our region and a champion for Australia, can't get ahead, and neither can thousands of other honest, hardworking Australian small-business owners.