Tuesday 19 August 2025

 

Thank you. This is my first major speech in my portfolio, and I am delighted to be giving it on such an auspicious day.

The choice was simple: Engage with small business? Or listen to the Treasurer talk up productivity while refusing to put industrial relations on the table, the need to streamline regulation from a government that has expanded red tape, and the need to lower the tax burden, while proposing new taxes no one vote for?

It wasn’t a tough choice. The Shadow Treasurer is a more patient than myself.

I would much rather be here with those that have backed themselves, chanced their hand, ridden the waves of success and setback, slept restless nights and lived the reality of industrial relations laws, given a kid their first job, trained them and then lost them to someone who can afford to pay more or give them a bigger horizon, while the horizons of big business often steam roll over you.

You are the country, not Canberra. And this is never lost on me.

I grew up in a family of small businesspeople. Growing up my parents were publicans. Neither University educated. Mum pulled beers, fried food in her own takeaway food shop and greeted people at supermarkets. Dad also pulled beers, mowed laws and built fences and then bagged mail as he owned one of the first retail post offices.

Now I accept I am not quite like them. I have owned small businesses but always avoided the risk of shifting from contracting out work to hiring out someone because I know the minefield that brings. I know the dreaded fear of passive aggressive letters from the ATO, and I know there are some people from the ATO outside in the foyer - hello. It is enough to spirit you the only thing you’d prefer is the much more naked bear pit of public office. But anyone who goes through my history will know I bring a certain entrepreneurialism to my public life. And that sometimes when you find a rule or regulation or a convention that sometimes it’s better to find a way around it. And that is many ways what small business people have to do on a daily basis.

I realise that for many small business owners our two worlds must seem a universe apart. But the common ground is to thrive you need to back yourself. In my world, exactly as I was introduced - the only person to have lost a seat to an independent and retaken it - there is a quote or a poem that is commonly used from former US President, Teddy Roosevelt, and it describes as, excuse the gendered language, being the ‘man in the arena’.

In yours it could be appropriated as being as the ‘merchant in the marketplace’:

It is not the consultant who counts; not the startup who points out how the established brand stumbles, or where private equity could have done them better. The credit belongs to the small business owner who is actually in the marketplace, whose voice is stressed by hawking and selling and counting; who strives daily; who errs, whose cashflow comes short again and again, because there is no reward without risk and responsibility; but who does actually strive for growth; who knows thrills of a deposit, the great devotions and demands of staff; whose profit is forgone on salaries; who at the best knows profit at EOFYS before tax, and who at insolvency, if insolvent, at least liquidates while having backed themselves, so that their place shall never be with those salaried souls who neither know windfall nor acquisition.

It is this spirit we must back. It is the raw energy of lived commercial hope. You cannot have reward without risk or responsibility. And you cannot succeed without accepting that you may also fail.

And it is testing. In small business, everyone tells you how to run your business better, yet yours is the energy that drives it, but others are always the first to put their hand out to you, but you also cannot do it without them.

And when I see small business, I don’t just see the bricks and mortar retail stores that so often appear in politicians’ happy snaps. I see the side hustles of online retail, the shared equity schemes of startups, the home businesses balancing while raising children, and the little warehouses at the end of side streets that have grown from the small bedroom.

When the government of often they think of the economy they think of calm corporate oceans. This is not the economy. Steering its tides needs captains who grab the wheel and sail toward a better future.

Owning your own business is more than just about the bottom line. It is about a choice to take a greater sense of agency over your life and destiny.

And that is why I wanted this portfolio and specifically asked for it. Not just because I want to stand by you. But because I want to stand up for you. To drive an agenda for you.

In terms of this approach, the guiding principles I will be bringing into this role over the next three years and they are clear:

  • The job of small business is to focus on their growth, not meeting the growth of government revenue.
  • Government’s job is to get out of the way, to boost small business where it can, and to be light as possible where it must interfere.
  • That red tape reduction is matched by time tape reduction – because decisions are made as fast as possible.
  • Any obligations should always be proportionate.
  • Business revenue should be geared toward growth tomorrow, not taxes today.
  • An open, competitive economy is the friend of challengers and small business.
  • The role of large corporates is to secure advantage from scale, not to exercise their power to diminish competition.
  • Government should actively enable procurement pathways for small business and prefer them over larger suppliers.
  • And we must bring about policy that brings this into light.

Because the current context of small business is challenging. The headline data makes it clear.

Record insolvencies. Rising costs. Tough finance. Access to credit. Complex industrial relations laws that do not encourage businesses to grow.

When I speak to small businesses the common thing said is that it is hard to make a profit with thin margins.

And when I listen to small business all I hear is of tax, complexity, regulation and red tape that distracts from core focus, family time or a balanced approach to life. Because while salaried employees in large corporates and work from home days and rostered volunteer days, small businesses struggle to get staff, and every dollar comes off their bottom line.

But the real test is when someone wants to set up a new business. Registering a new company name and ABN is relatively easy. But that is where it begins, not ends.

What you find quickly is that costs rise, and when you’re trying to focus on building your customer base, expand your product or service offering, and hawk your wares the letters from the ATO roll in, and your costs quickly go with it. Policy design is not always matched with the reality of small business.

Now I’m not one of those naked partisans who believes that my side of politics has always got things right. In fact, I'm afraid to say it, but some of my colleagues, I've explicitly said that they haven’t always got things right.

But at least I do believe their intent has always been there and tried to get the balance.

I cannot say the same about the current government. The problem with the current government is that they see the nation from Canberra, not community and competitive commerce.

That means they respond based on those that stalk the corridors of power. Now COSBOA is there to stand up for you but you are always outnumbered.

The Government understands the rhetoric of the Prime Minister’s corridor, but not the reality of retailers operating on Pitt Street, the family business out of Prahran, the side hustle of Paddington, the startup in Perth or the e-business in Prospect.

They do not get the limitations on small business. They think every time they make a decision, behind every ABN there are Human Resources offices, legal divisions, tax departments and specialist industrial relations advisors as back-end bureaucracies to interpret the war and peace of legislation, regulation and case law on simple things like how to employ someone to paying the right rate between placing a meal and washing a dish.

This compliance reality is actually the the memory of my childhood. Every day my father would come back from building fences. The time after dinner was spent typing quotes. And Sunday was for doing tax not family time.

This isn’t good and it can’t go on.

I respect that there is a lot of history that got us to this point. But as with all things in life, we cannot decide the situations we’ve inherited, but we do have choices about how we respond. To continue tolerating such needless complexity is a cocktail of absurdity, stupidity and insanity.

This Government is indifferent to the cost of implementation, before the explicit cost that is incurred by small business and to no one’s benefit.

Misdirection of capital to no-one’s advantage. It’s not just an economic cost but a human cost as well.

We can’t just sit back and wait for change. We can’t wait for another election. If small business is to be heard, we have to storm the citadel. We have to stand up, stand firm, and have your voice heard.

Of course government’s rarely want to hear the sense. And I don’t think they’re particularly keen to hear from small business. But we don’t need to wait for them, either for an open ear or an invitation.

We faced this reality recently when the government recently sought to pass its penalty rates legislation through the Parliament. The origins of the law were clear. The retail industry wanted to pay workers a 35 per cent higher base rate for a simpler award. The problem was that workers would win, and the union tax wouldn’t be paid. So Labor had one choice – they sought to outlaw it.

So then they started their legislative victory lap after the election, we respected obviously they won the election. It didn’t mean we couldn’t be the voice of small business and challenge their assumptions.

But Parliament is not the National People’s Congress, and we challenged the Minister on basic assumptions from the regulatory impact statement to the number of small businesses impacted. We also threw questions from individual small businesses to her on its impact on the floor of Parliament. Putting aside the sloppy drafting which she later had to amend, every time she was asked a question about how her laws would work in the real world, she became flustered and couldn’t answer – just like she couldn’t answer how many small businesses would be impacted and they didn’t know.

Just like on the weekend when I suggested we should simplify industrial relations arrangements to make it easier for small business to hire workers and pay them more rather than have their own human resources department. The only response from the Treasurer scoffed at such suggestions lest union taxes wouldn’t be paid.

We have to take the fight up to the Government and make sure your voice is heard loud and proud. Because when we are debating the government’s agenda nothing is more powerful than the real stories of what is occurring on the ground. I am not the voice of small business. You are. My job is to amplify your voice, and to ensure it is given national prominence. And the commitment I will give you today is every step of the way I will do that. We need your stories.

So today I am announcing a series of Shadow Ministerial inquiries to take testimony and give a platform for your views. Today I am announcing Shadow Ministerial inquiries where small business can have their voice:

  1. An inquiry into the small business impact of the family savings tax on unrealised capital gains.
  2. An inquiry into the impact of ATO debt on small business.
  3. An inquiry into the limits on small business into government and large company procurement.
  4. An inquiry into incentives to support online business and side hustles.

Now further details on each of these will be announced in good order.

But we want to provide a direct opportunity for small businesses to have their say and for them to offer their ideas and suggestions, not just in policy development but in evidenced-base, so that when issues arrive you know exactly how to have a voice, not only to me but into the parliament of the Commonwealth and then for those voices to be raised directly with the Minister as well.

Each will involve taking submissions whether they be formal or simply people offering their insights through our online portal. We will hold web hearings and if appropriate physical ones. And from them we want to build the case for reform and amplify your voice.

And I need to make this clear.

If we’re missing something, tell us. Because so often small business is focused on getting on with its business.

They don’t know where to go or what do. And we want to be the shortcut so you don’t have to pick up the cudgel.

I don’t just want to see a better environment for those already in small business. I want to see more Australians choose it as a pathway.

Because we should not want Australians to be controlled by dependence on a salary.

We should want Australians to aspire, to dare and to dream to take control.

Some people will of course choose small business. Others will be part of a mixture of security of a salary. And others as part of a portfolio in their life.

The limitation should only be the extent someone is prepared to back themselves.

My focus will be on enlarging the constituency that brings dynamism to the the economy, for the next generation to try a side hustle or a shared equity scheme or consult on the side. We should want the next generation to be energised to go it alone, or with a team that goes on to back themselves.

When we do that, we have shifted the mindset from a nation of binary employers and employees to empowered workers and small businesses. That is what I want to see. And is what I want the rulebooks to make possible. And that is what I am fighting for everyday over the next three years.

Thank you.

ENDS