Friday, 22 August 2025

E&OE

Thank you for the opportunity to be here and Peter and the team and Trudy, thank you so much. I was here at your conference last year in Canberra in slightly different circumstances, political and professional. How things move. But it's exciting to be back and I know, in fact, I think your Minister was different this time last year, Stephen Jones was the Minister of Financial Services. I think he came off the back of that, and obviously the government has decided they don't like the OECD very much and decide to dispatch him there. But of course, since then, lots of wheels have turned, politics has turned, including my election, as Warren outlined. Now since the election, I've also had the great privilege of becoming the Shadow Minister for Small Business. Now, while, of course I know Pat Conaghan who spoke to you earlier in the week, is your Shadow Minister, and of course there are a number of issues that he raised, released, I read in the media reports. And you have, of course no doubt, deep interest in what my views on those topics are. I, of course, have to defer to his judgment. But certainly he raised in what I read of his commentary, a number of the concerns that I raised last year and I've raised with Peter previously in the past. 

And so you should feel very confident that the Coalition economic team has the consistent concern about the issues of red-tape and what the industry is going through. I understand that some of it didn't necessarily start under the current government. Our job is to steer and to challenge and steer the conversation into a helpful direction and to challenge the government every step of the way because we already have such a big problem where people simply aren't getting the financial advice they need. It's actually that simple. And the reality is when people don't get the financial advice they need, they do not make the decisions that they go on to plan out their life successfully and improve their material wealth and wellbeing. More importantly, it becomes the domain of the affluent and the well-off who only compound their wealth position at the expense of everyday Australians. And we know what's happened to the sector. 

We know the incredible burdens that you have shared, and of course what's happened with education and obligations, which many people have left. And we do not want to see a continuation of that through higher cost or regulation, which leads to a situation where both, more people leave or that people choose not to make it a choice as a career pathway. And that isn't lost on me, it isn't on Pat, it's not lost on the Shadow Treasurer, Ted O'Brien or James Paterson. So you have an open door, feel free to engage, feel free to put your views forward, they're very welcome views and that continue forward. And that's going to be the approach I'm going to bring in the role of Shadow Minister for Small Business because you are all small businesses. 

You are part of the rich tapestry of the small business fabric of our nation. And you're all doing it tough. It's not just isolated financial planners. Every single place I go around this country right now, small businesses tell me the same story. The margins are thin. Aggregate demand or consumer demand is tight. Everywhere consumers are experiencing the realities of rising costs. You might have had a couple of drops in interest rates but it hasn't materially changed people's circumstances because they're watching their insurance agreements rise. You will see this every day. I don't need to tell you this story. So everybody who's in business who's got their own business costs rising, while of course their revenues are not rising at the same rate as, is doing it tough. And they don't need the government coming along and making it harder. 

The key question is what can we do to make it easier? And of course we've just had three days of a talkfest tax, about tax hikes basically, and there doesn't seem to be anything substantial that has come out of it. And I don't say that to be negative against the government. If they were coming forward with a plan that would actually boost the economic productivity of this country, I would welcome it, genuinely. 

I'm happy that they turned around and said our policy position on building more housing before the last election, which they rejected, they are now of course adopting. That is a good thing. But we need them to come forward with much clearer plans now about what they're going to do around red-tape to get this economy moving, so that we can build the next round of economic productivity and wealth creation for this nation. Because it isn't clear to me where the next round of economic growth is going to come from. 

But more importantly, what we need more Australians to do is back themselves because while it's great that we have very low unemployment, and that is a good thing, the future of the economy is going to be driven more and more by flexible work arrangements. As more people choose the choice between salaries, side-hustles, and stakes and shared equity schemes. As the economy becomes more nimble and faces the reality of the presentation that you were just given then. Artificial intelligence is both a threat but also a massive and exciting opportunity for small business to engineer and to grow. I'm excited by the opportunity that presents for us. But the question is are we going to have the regulatory environment to back people to take that chance? Are we actually going to have the energy in the economy to drive it forward? And to be frank at the moment it doesn't seem like that's going to be the case. 

It's certainly not the way the government is approaching it at the moment. They seem to have an approach which is more concentrated on everybody operating or working for large corporates, or big industry super capital, or of course government, not actually an economy that's built from small business up. We need a spirit and an energy that comes about, because people backed themselves. Earlier this week I gave a speech to the Council of Small Business of Australia and their National Small Business Summit, and said, I know there's a big difference between small business and politics, and my parents were small business people and I chose the life for the most part of public service and the occasional little breach of doing a PhD - which my supervisor Professor Sinclair Davidson is here and I won't say I'm actively avoiding him because we're going to have a conversation about what we're gonna do about my PhD because I always love seeing Sinclair. 

But, the reality is we need to bring back a sense of energy and vibrancy. And one of my favourite poems about politics is by former U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt, who gave a kind of an anthem for aspirin politicians, which is called the Man in the Arena speech. Anyone who's familiar with it, it's all about specifically how you need to back yourself in politics. But the same is true in small business. And I'd re-appropriate it in the context of 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.”

And that has to be the spirit that we bring to small business, an energy and enthusiasm. But it's more than that. It's that we need those voices heard. But when I talk to small businesses, they talk about thin margins, but they also think that the political system has given up on them, that nobody actually cares anymore. And I don't dance around the topic. They say that about the Labor Party. They say it about my party. They don't feel like they have a voice into the system, or that anybody's amplifying their voice in the system. And when they go to Canberra and they walk the corridors, so often they're discarded in comparison to the large corporate voices who get much more access. And I think it's fair enough, frankly. 

Certainly, that's not the approach I seek to take or everybody's sought to take. But I hear one commitment, which is that will never be the attitude you'll get from a RG49. We're constrained with our resources and our time, I'm not going to try and pretend that. But it's explicit, and it's a commitment, that my objective is I am not the voice of small business, but I will be your amplifier. Because you are the voice of small business. And behind every small business is a human story about what you're sacrificing to get yourself, your family ahead. And how you're navigating that on a daily basis. And the most powerful thing we have in small business in this country are the human stories and human voices of what's going on in the ground. 

We had this recently in a debate around penalty rates where Amanda Rishworth, the Minister for Industrial Relations just wanted to ram a piece of legislation through. And I almost feel sorry for her at times because she had to confront me being my most precocious self, and throwing her example, after example, after example, of simple stories of how it was going to play out on the ground that we collected from small business, from rostering and how people are going to lose moments on their job. And every time she had no answer to those questions. 

So as much as possible, we want your stories, we're going to give them a platform because that's the basis that the Ministers and the Government are forced to track, to change track, to change their attitude, to engage, and to be forced to consider your issues and make sure that they're at the heart of government decision-making. I'm not going to say we're always going to be successful, but at least if we do that, you will have your voice. And then at least when this comes to election time, you'll have every reason to say they didn't listen and that we need change. And that goes on both sides. And I made that very clear. So you know you've always got an open door. I hope you think so. I've tried to be as accessible as possible. 

The challenge I've got at the moment is there's a lot of people after the time, but we do everything we can. And that we're here to back you every step of the way to be part of the conversation. Because this country is not governed from Canberra down. It's 27 million Australians up. Families and communities are the foundation for the success of our nation. So that's my commitment to you. That's the base of which I'm here. And please reach out because we are keen to be part of the conversation, we want you to be part of it too. Thanks for having me.

ENDS