Thank you, and good evening.
It is a privilege to join COSBOA, its members, partners and advocates at the National Small Business Summit Gala Dinner.
I was having a look at the program for this summit earlier, and wow, what a program Skye and the rest of the COSBOA team have put on.
And with good reason. For small business there is certainly a lot to talk about.
I did look for the government’s Minister for Small Business, Minister Aly, here today - but I’m told priorities elsewhere took precedence.
Small business is getting used to that.
But I do want to acknowledge the Minister for Workplace Relations, Minister Rishworth, for standing in for Anne Aly today. Small business owners know her Industrial Relations portfolio well - usually from the wrong end.
It might be the unintentional misapplication of a complicated award which tags you as a “wage thief”, yet another workplace obligation that must be accrued and accounted for as a looming liability, or - increasingly - an unfair dismissal claim for which it is easier to pay “go away” money than defend what is right - what is actually fair as opposed to what someone can get away with.
To be honest I’d think the audience in this room would have preferred to hear more from the portfolio that is supposedly there to support small business rather than from one - one of many it seems - that is holding you back.
Perhaps the government doesn’t think that the representative they send here doesn’t make a difference.
To them, small business and workplace relations are the same conversation.
And that's the problem.
Labor thinks that every small-business problem seems to have the same solution: another workplace relations law.
That’s exactly the wrong solution.
Just last month, I addressed the COSBOA Small Business Industry Leaders Forum in my home state of Victoria. And as you would expect from a Senator, I am a proud - even parochial - Victorian.
It wasn’t so long ago that a Victorian could come to Sydney and be very bullish about how our state had the monopoly on small cafes in laneways, and businesses that were popping up across communities like wildflowers after rain.
Sadly, I don’t get to say that any more - now coming to Sydney is a bit like coming home to Melbourne ten years ago. Because my state is a cautionary tale, particularly for small business.
Rampant union corruption on building sites. Crime that goes unpunished. A bloated public sector, but corroded public services. An economy that burdens businesses and families with punitive taxes, and future generations with unserviceable levels of debt.
In my own communities, I meet with small businesses that have been firebombed by gangs fighting a war over illegal tobacco. It’s not the tobacco shop that suffers - that goes back into business days later in a vacant shop less than 100 metres up the street.
It’s the businesses that are next door that see their insurance sky rocket.
It’s the customers too afraid to come back. Or worse, the employees who lose their jobs entirely because, funny thing about fires, they don’t distinguish between the target of the bomb and anyone else.
Small business in my state is no longer in bloom. It’s under attack. This must change.
Because small business is not an abstract part of the economy. It is the economy.
It is the butcher sponsoring the local footy club. The hairdresser giving a young person their first job. The builder taking on another apprentice.
Now - Small business people, much like Liberals, are optimists. You have to be - I know I do. Because despite all the reasons not to start an enterprise, you get up and do it.
When an economy fails, small business feels it first. And when an economy recovers, small business leads it back.
That is why this room matters.
Small business is not a niche interest in the Australian economy. It isthe Australian economy - in human form and on a grand scale.
But right now, too many are at breaking point.
Right now, 30 businesses are closing each and every day.
Now, the Government talks a lot about small business.
The trouble is, every policy seems designed to make small business... smaller.
These businesses that are closing their doors are not remote corporations represented by anonymous numbers.
They are builders, restaurants, retailers, consultants, subcontractors and family enterprises.
Behind every insolvency is a web of human consequences: workers who lose jobs, suppliers who are not paid, landlords left exposed, savings lost, marriages strained and dreams abandoned.
And even among businesses that survive, the pressure is relentless.
Every cost has risen. Every regulation has multiplied. Every spare hour has disappeared.
Small business owners understand that rules are sometimes necessary. They want safe workplaces, honest markets, fair competition and high standards.
What they cannot tolerate is a system that assumes every employer is a potential criminal, every decision requires a form, and every form requires another consultant.
A large corporation can spread compliance costs across an entire division.
A small business spreads them across the kitchen table.
That is why deregulation is not an ideological luxury. It is an economic necessity.
Just last week, I visited an iconic small family business in Melbourne, LaManna & Sons.
A few weeks earlier, I had watched Brandon and Jordan LaManna on the Today Show talking about the pressure facing small businesses in Victoria. I wanted to hear it firsthand.
What struck me wasn't that they were asking government for a handout.
They weren't. They were asking government to stop making it harder to run a business.
In their café they've boarded up part of the premises and painted a message across it - a poem for all their customers to read - that captures exactly how so many small business owners are feeling.
Here’s what it said:
“Behind this wall was a space well used, now squeezed by the Government and cost abused.
Regulations, laws, tax and crime, we work harder but can’t keep a dime.
The heartbeat of small businesses you are breaking, more and more you are taking.
Stop the spending of our tax, we are overburdened to the max.
Small businesses are the Aussie humble, you push us harder while many suffer and crumble.
Hoping one day, when normality is back ,we will open this space and get on the right track.”
Now maybe the LaManna boys aren’t natural poets, but that’s ok. You don’t need to tell them to stick to their day jobs - that’s what they want to do!
The LaManna’s message isn't a plea for government intervention.
It's a plea for government to stop making it harder to do what they do best.
And that goes to the heart of the Coalition's philosophy.
Set clear guardrails, enforce them properly and then trust Australians to get on with the job.
We do not believe prosperity is designed in a department.
It is built in workshops, offices, shops, farms, factories and homes. It is built by people willing to risk their savings, their reputation and often their sleep.
Our task is not to command that enterprise. It is to liberate it.
That is why, as Shadow Minister for Productivity and Deregulation, my focus is straightforward: make it easier to start, run and grow a business in Australia.
First, we will pursue a serious national red-tape reduction agenda.
We will identify the rules that impose the greatest cost for the least public benefit, and we will repeal, simplify or harmonise them.
We will require government to measure regulatory costs honestly, because time is not free simply because Canberra does not write a cheque for it.
We will restore discipline to regulation.
New rules should come with a clear problem, a credible cost-benefit analysis, a small-business impact assessment and an expiry or review mechanism.
Ministers and departments should have to defend the cumulative burden they impose, not assess each new regulation as though it were the only one on the books.
The objective is simple: tradies, farmers and businesses should spend less time dealing with government and more time doing their jobs.
To put that into perspective, in Victoria a cafe owner has to jump through 37 different regulatory hoops just to get a licence before they can serve a single coffee.
That's before they've sold their first coffee. That’s before they've employed their first staff member. That's before they've earned their first dollar.
Second, we will reduce duplication across Commonwealth, state and local government.
A person opening a café can face dozens of regulatory steps before serving a single customer.
Different licences, overlapping inspections, inconsistent definitions and repeated requests for information create a thicket that discourages enterprise before it begins.
We will work toward a genuine tell-us-once approach, common definitions, digital recognition of licences and genuinely streamlined approvals.
Third, we will back investment and growth.
A business that reinvests in equipment, technology, skills or expansion should be encouraged, not punished.
The Coalition’s record includes reducing the small-business company tax rate to 25 per cent and expanding the instant asset write-off to $50,000.
Those measures worked because they respected a simple truth: business owners generally know better than government where their next dollar should be invested.
This is what deregulation means in practice.
It means replacing complexity with clarity, duplication with consistency, and suspicion with trust.
Deregulation does not mean having no rules. It means having better rules.
Rules that protect people rather than processes. Rules that punish deliberate wrongdoing without criminalising honest mistakes.
Rules that recognise a local café is not a multinational corporation, and should not be regulated as though it were.
But nowhere is the case for better regulation more urgent than in our industrial relations system.
Small businesses should be able to employ someone without first needing a lawyer, an industrial-relations specialist and the courage of a bomb-disposal expert.
The Coalition looks at our industrial relations system through the lens of the following three things: simple, fair and productive.
It should be simple. Most importantly, it should be easy to understand, and it should be easy to comply with, and any disputes should be dealt with in a timely way.
It should be fair. It should be fair for employers, for employees, and for consumers as well, because when an industrial relations system is unfair, everybody pays a price.
And it should be focused on productivity because that's the way we lead to higher living standards. That's the most important thing.
Now, productivity can sound like an economist's word but it is actually the only sustainable way Australians become better off.
Not through government spending. Not through higher taxes.
Through higher productivity.
That's how wages rise. That's how businesses grow. That's how families enjoy higher living standards.
And when it comes to industrial relations, my concern is Labor, as the political arm of the union movement, simply focuses on what it can do for its union paymasters.
Let me give you two recent examples.
The first is the Labor’s “Building Cooperative Workplaces” Bill they passed earlier in the year. The main purpose of this legislation was to go some way to alleviating the backlog in the Fair Work Commission due to the increase in artificial intelligence being used in applications.
Hidden in the legislation was a provision that allowed the Commonwealth, when awarding contracts and grants, to preference employers whose workers are covered by union-covered enterprise agreements.
And we know so many of you don’t fall into that category.
The Coalition opposed those provisions.
Government contracts should be awarded on value, capability and performance - not on whether a business adopts Labor's preferred workplace model.
Small businesses should never find themselves pushed to the back of the queue because they choose a lawful workplace arrangement that differs from the government's preference.
Employers were given no meaningful say in the development of these procurement changes.
Yet they may affect who can compete for Commonwealth work, the costs of doing so and the way businesses manage their own workplaces.
The second example is Labor’s proposed “Fair Work Court”.
We have not yet seen legislation. We do not know precisely what cases the court would hear, or how matters would move between the Commission and the court.
Perhaps small business would benefit from strict rules of evidence and precedent rather than the Fair Work Commission’s less formal and more discretionary approach.
There are so many questions we don’t have answers to, and these answers matter, particularly for smaller employers, for whom even a successful legal defence can consume enormous amounts of time and money.
I want to hear directly from all of you and your colleagues as the Government develops this Court.
Would a specialist court help you resolve disputes more quickly, or would it create another layer of process? What safeguards would you need against speculative or unnecessarily prolonged claims? How should costs be handled? And how should the court interact with the Fair Work Commission and the existing federal courts?
The Coalition will scrutinise any proposal against the same three tests: is it simple, is it fair and will it contribute to a more productive Australia?
And we will insist that the voices of employers and employees and not only those of the union movement are heard.
The Coalition knows that you need an economy moving with you for your small businesses to thrive.
Under Angus Taylor, we have a clear vision for Australia.
A real plan to fix the economy and protect our way of life. It is simple - lower taxes, cheaper energy, lower migration and more homes, and a government that puts Australians first.
This summit is an important forum for these discussions on the future of small business in this country.
In the same way the Liberal party is the voice of the forgotten people of the battlers, COSBOA is the voice for the unrepresented.
For the people who are too busy balancing the books at the kitchen table after the kids have gone to bed.
Too busy filling in BAS statements, chasing unpaid invoices and doing the payroll.
Too busy worrying about paying wages before they pay themselves.
They don’t walk a picket line. They don’t protest in the streets. They don’t convoy to Canberra.
They deserve a government that works just as hard for them as they work for their communities.
A government that trusts them.
That backs them.
That gets out of their way when it should, and stands beside them when it matters.
On Friday morning, when I go back to my city and order a coffee from Joey, I will be reminded that all week he has stared out of his shop at the firebombed shop across the road.
For all of you who work in sectors that support businesses like his, remember that my home state is a cautionary tale.
Unless good governments nurture and encourage small business, our economy can look more like Melbourne than Sydney.
Every stronger economy starts with someone willing to employ another Australian.
That is what small business does.
That is why it matters.
And that is why the Coalition will always stand with Australia's small businesses.