Mr PORTER (Pearce—Minister for Social Services) (09:32): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Quality and Safeguards Commission and Other Measures) Bill 2017 establishes the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission for full scheme NDIS. The commission will deliver on the government's commitment to establish nationally consistent quality assurance mechanisms and safeguards for NDIS participants.

The bill also makes administrative amendments to ensure the efficient and effective operation of the NDIS, resulting from an independent review of the act in 2015, as required by the act and as supported by COAG.

The NDIS is one of the largest social and economic policy reforms in Australia's history. At full scheme, it is estimated that 460,000 participants will receive supports from thousands of NDIS providers.

The NDIS therefore represents a dramatic shift from services delivered under largely block-funded contractual relationships between providers and primarily state and territory governments, to one where people with a disability purchase and consume services from providers.

The government has been fully committed to the NDIS from day one. We are bringing forward this bill to establish a new commission to oversee quality and safeguards at full implementation of the NDIS. The commission will:

Register NDIS providers and oversee provider quality

Respond to complaints and manage reportable incidents such as the abuse and neglect of any participant

Provide leadership to reduce and eliminate the use of restrictive practices in the NDIS. The definition within the bill of a restrictive practice is any practice or intervention that has the effect of restricting the rights or freedom of movement of a person with disability.

Lead the overall design and broad policy settings for nationally consistent NDIS worker screening.

The bill seeks to balance appropriate protections that meet governments' duty of care obligations, with enabling participants to take reasonable risks in pursuit of their goals. The commission will support a strong and viable market for disability services that offers people with disability genuine choice and control.

In February 2017, the Disability Reform Council released the NDIS Quality and Safeguarding Framework. The framework was developed in consultation with people with disability, carers, providers and peak bodies over a three-year period. It outlines the ongoing commitment of all jurisdictions to quality and safeguards for people with disability.

A series of recent inquiries and reports have documented the weaknesses of the current safeguarding arrangements for disability services, many of which result from a disconnection between quality assurance and oversight regulatory functions. These inquiries include the Senate inquiry into violence, abuse and neglect against people with a disability in institutional and residential settings, Victorian government inquiries, and the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. These inquiries found failures to uncover, report and respond to abuse, and inadequate national screening of workers. They called for nationally consistent provider accreditation and the use of positive behaviour support strategies to reduce challenging behaviours instead of using restrictive practices.

This bill establishes the Commonwealth's regulatory responsibilities under the NDIS Quality and Safeguarding Framework and in large part forms the basis of the government's response to the Senate inquiry.

The new arrangements replace a complex and fragmented system of quality and safeguards in each state and territory, delivering a nationally consistent approach.

The commission will uphold the rights of people with disability, as part of Australia's commitment to the UN convention, through the exercise of its registration and regulatory functions. Article 11 of the UN convention provides that all necessary measures must be taken to ensure the protection and safety of people with disability in situations of risk. Article 16 requires that people with disability be protected from exploitation, violence and abuse.

The commission will be led by a commissioner who will be a statutory office holder and staffed by members of the Australian Public Service. The commission will operate with up to 300 staff, at a total cost of $209 million over four years.

The bill establishes the commission in the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013 (the act). The existing objects and principles of the act will underpin and inform the commission's regulatory activities. An additional object has been included to provide the specific focus required of this commission—'to protect and prevent people with disability from experiencing harm arising from poor or unsafe supports or services under the NDIS'.

In support of the commission's registration functions, the bill provides the power to mandate types of supports considered higher risk which can only be delivered by a registered NDIS provider.

The bill includes a power to issue NDIS practice standards benchmarking expectations relating to the quality of support delivery, participants' rights, the management of organisational and operational risk, continuous improvement, legal obligations and workforce management. The registration system requires providers delivering higher risk supports to obtain third-party quality certification against the practice standards and providers delivering lower-risk supports to undergo a 'lighter touch' verification process.

Registered NDIS providers will be required to notify the commission of certain reportable incidents, and comply with all registration conditions and the NDIS Code of Conduct. Establishing the expectations and obligations for NDIS providers will contribute to fostering high-quality and safe supports and services.

The bill requires registered NDIS providers to maintain complaints and incident management systems in accordance with requirements to be detailed in the rules. It further establishes the commission's complaints function, which will receive, manage and respond to complaints about NDIS providers and workers. The commission will provide information about the complaints process to people with disability and also provide information to providers, on best practice complaints handling. The commission will support people with disability to be heard and provide protections from victimisation should they make a complaint.

The commission will have extensive compliance and enforcement powers under this bill, commensurate to the vulnerability of some participants within the NDIS. Monitoring and investigation powers will allow matters to be pursued whether they originate from suspected breaches of registration conditions, the NDIS Code of Conduct, reportable incidents or complaints. Operating as an independent statutory body with integrated functions and powers, the commission will be a fit-for-purpose, evidence-based, responsive regulator.

Integral to responsive regulation is the ability to monitor changes in the market using data it collects in the course of its regulatory activities.

The bill establishes a market oversight function which will draw on information gathered across the commission's functions. It will identify provider practice indicating emerging risk and that may contribute to provider failure and unplanned service withdrawal.

Information gathering and sharing provisions within the bill will support the commission to work with other regulators and state and territory governments to identify and collect regulatory intelligence.

The bill provides the commission with a broad policy design responsibility, including determining scope, information to be considered and a decision-making framework. The states and territories will be responsible for operating worker screening for the NDIS.

The bill sets out the role of the commission in providing national oversight and policy settings in relation to promoting strategies to reduce challenging behaviours, and monitoring the use of restrictive practices within the NDIS.

Under the commission a restrictive practice will be used only as a last resort. It must form part of a behaviour support plan which includes positive behaviour support strategies and which has been developed by a registered behaviour support practitioner. Restrictive practices must also be authorised by the state or territory in which the participant resides.

The bill provides for the orderly transfer of providers from existing state and territory regulatory environments as each jurisdiction reaches full scheme. The commission will be established in early 2018 and commence operations in New South Wales and South Australia in July 2018 and in remaining states and territories, except Western Australia, in July 2019. In Western Australia, it will operate from 2020, subject to final negotiations with that state. The NDIS participants will continue to be covered by state and territory quality and safeguards systems until the new commission is in place at full scheme.

This bill also amends the NDIS Act in response to an independent review of the operation of the act. The review, required by section 208 of the act, considered the operation of the act in supporting the scheme, and whether any changes were necessary for that purpose. The amendments in schedule 2 to this bill were recommended by the review and are supported by COAG in its response to the review recommendations. The amendments are largely administrative and focus on ensuring the effective operation of the legislation.

For example, the amendments expand on the general supports which can be provided to people with disability under the scheme, to support the implementation of the Information, Linkages and Capacity Building element of the scheme.

The amendments provide clarification of some elements of act—for example, how the disability requirements apply to people with chronic health conditions; how a person with lived experience of disability can become a member of the NDIA board; and how the NDIA gathers information on people who may be eligible for support under the NDIS.

The Turnbull government will continue to work with NDIS participants and the disability sector to deliver a fully funded, high-quality NDIS. This bill represents a significant step forward in protections for people with disability, their families and carers. We will continue to consult with stakeholders to establish nationally consistent expectations for the conduct of providers, the training and screening of their workers and the quality of supports and services that they deliver under the NDIS.

I commend the bill to the House.

Debate adjourned.

Mr PORTER (Pearce—Minister for Social Services) (09:43): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This bill seeks to end compensation for a carbon tax that no longer exists by closing the energy supplement to new welfare recipients. The government is committed to ensuring that Australia's welfare system provides appropriate support to those in need whilst also remaining sustainable for future generations. The government therefore does not consider it appropriate to continue to compensate people for a tax that no longer exists.

The carbon tax was repealed from 1 July 2014. Had the carbon tax not been repealed it would have caused long-term increases in electricity prices. Indeed, electricity prices more than doubled under the previous government between December 2007 and September 2013, and when the carbon tax was repealed on 1 July 2014 the ACCC estimated annual savings of between $46 and $263 in residential electricity costs alone.

The concept of ending compensation for a tax that no longer exists has already been agreed to by the parliament through the passage of the Budget Savings (Omnibus) Bill 2016. As a result of the Budget Savings (Omnibus) Act 2016, carbon tax compensation has already been closed to new recipients of FTB A, FTB B and the Commonwealth seniors health card from 20 March 2017.

Under the bill that I introduce today, the energy supplement will be closed to new income support recipients, from 20 September 2017.

People who have been in the income support system continuously since 19 September 2016 will continue to receive the energy supplement. Existing recipients will continue to receive the payment as long as they have remained continuously eligible from 19 September 2016 for an income support payment that attracts the energy supplement. From 19 September 2016, if an existing recipient transfers, or has transferred, directly from one income support payment attracting the supplement to another, without a break in entitlement, they will continue to receive the energy supplement applicable to their new payment.

There will be transitional arrangements in place for people who have entered the income support system between 20 September 2016 and 19 September 2017. These people have and will receive the energy supplement temporarily during that period, as long as they remain eligible for an income support payment, but will no longer receive the supplement from 20 September 2017.

This measure was previously introduced in the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017. The Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017 was reviewed by three different committees within this parliament.

I thank the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee for its report on the measures that were contained in the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017 and for its recommendations. The report was published on 21 March 2017 and I note that the committee recommended that the bill be passed. The committee considered that the changes to Australia's welfare system would better target government payments whilst still providing a fair and reasonable safety net for those who need it. The committee also noted that the measures in the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017 would encourage and support greater workforce participation for those who have the capacity to work and would therefore ensure that Australia's welfare system is sustainable in the future. For these reasons, the government supports the measure being introduced today, that was previously introduced in schedule 9 of that bill to which I have referred.

The government will continue to prioritise energy security and affordability. The 2017-18 budget includes a $265 million energy package that will ensure Australia maintains a secure, reliable and competitive energy system into the future. Amongst a range of measures, it provides funding to expand gas supply, makes finance available to build a solar thermal plant and provides additional funding for the Australian Energy Regulator to scrutinise energy providers to ensure they are serving consumers' needs.

The government has also directed the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to review electricity retail prices. The review will examine the competitiveness of offers available to households and businesses to make sure they are paying no more than necessary. A preliminary report is due by 27 September 2017 and a final report due 30 June 2018.

The Turnbull government will start work on an electricity game-changer: the plan for the Snowy Mountains Scheme 2.0. This unprecedented expansion will help make renewables reliable, filling in holes caused by intermittent supply and generator outages. It will enable greater energy efficiency and help stabilise electricity supply into the future. This will ultimately mean cheaper power prices and more money in the pockets of Australians.

Gas-fired generation is also an important part of our electricity system. The higher the price of gas the higher the price of electricity. That is why the government is also taking action to put downward pressure on the price of gas by expanding supply. The government is putting in place an export control mechanism to ensure Australians have access to gas at a fair price and calling on the states and territories to lift their moratoria to allow for more supply.

The repeal of the carbon tax and the actions this government is taking to put downward pressure on electricity prices will ensure that new welfare recipients are provided appropriate support without the ongoing need for compensation for a tax that no longer exists. I note that those opposite adopted this very policy in their election costings in 2016, and I seek support for the passage of the legislation or, at the very least, appropriate explanations to the Australian people for the additional billion dollar black hole that would occur in the budget of those opposite. I commend the bill to the House.

Debate adjourned.

Mr FRYDENBERG (Kooyong—Minister for the Environment and Energy) (09:50): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

The purpose of this bill is to permit the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to invest in carbon capture and storage technologies.

The CEFC invests directly and indirectly in clean energy technologies, helping to drive down their cost. It makes its investment decisions independently of the government, and has a total of $10 billion in available capital.

Under the Clean Energy Finance Corporation Act, the CEFC is prohibited from funding CCS technologies. This bill removes the prohibition and provides the CEFC with the option of investing in CCS technologies.

Access to finance is one of the barriers to investment in CCS technologies. This change will provide direct support for CCS technologies, encourage greater private sector investment and reduce risk for potential investors.

Widening the scope of emissions reduction technologies the CEFC can invest in will also assist in achieving our emissions reduction targets more cost-effectively while delivering on our commitment to maintaining energy reliability and security as we transition to a lower-emissions future.

CCS technology has been acclaimed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) as critical to enabling the world to meet its emission reduction targets.

CCS is now a proven low-emissions technology. Data provided by the Global CCS Institute and the CO2CRC illustrates that there are 17 large-scale CCS facilities in operation around the world. Further, the institute expects that by the end of 2017 there will be more than 22 facilities operational globally, compared to fewer than 10 at the beginning of this decade.

CCS technology can also help reduce emissions from emissions-intensive industrial processes. The International Energy Agency has stated that CCS is the only option available to significantly reduce emissions from some major industrial processes, such as iron and steel production, cement production and natural gas processing.

By way of example, the Gorgon LNG project in Western Australia will soon become one of the world's largest CCS projects when it begins sequestering up to four million tonnes per annum of carbon dioxide in the coming years.

Removing the prohibition against investment in CCS technologies will allow the CEFC to support a wider range of low-emission technologies and thereby reduce emissions more cost-effectively.

The CEFC's ability to invest in CCS technologies will complement other low-emissions investment by the federal government, including more than $3 billion worth of wind, solar and storage projects since 2013.

Debate adjourned.

Mr McCORMACK (Riverina—Minister for Small Business) (09:54): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I am pleased to introduce a bill that will clarify and strengthen the role and functions of Safe Work Australia.

Safe Work Australia was established in 2008 to develop national policy relating to work health and safety and workers' compensation.

The bill was informed by the review of the role and functions of Safe Work Australia. Under the Safe Work Australia Act, a review of the legislation was required after six years of operation.

The review was tabled in parliament on 8th of November 2016.

The review confirmed that Safe Work Australia plays an important role in facilitating a national focus on work health and safety and workers' compensation.

It provides a strong tripartite framework—that is, representatives from government, employers and employees—for engagement on safety matters.

The review also identified scope for improvement and recommended the Safe Work Australia Act be amended to:

clarify Safe Work Australia's role and the relationships between its role and functions, and

update, consolidate and simplify Safe Work Australia's functions to ensure they are clear, achievable, remain contemporary and support Safe Work Australia's role into the future.

The bill gives effect to these recommendations.

The bill amends the Safe Work Australia Act to insert an object provision which clearly states that Safe Work Australia's role and purpose is to—among other things—improve national work health and safety and workers' compensation arrangements.

The new object provision also emphasises the importance of collaboration on national work health and safety and workers' compensation matters.

To complement this, the bill provides Safe Work Australia with a specific function to collaborate with the Commonwealth, the states and territories and international bodies to drive further improvements in work health and safety outcomes and workers' compensation arrangements.

There was extensive consultation with stakeholders through both the Review process and the development of this bill.

This bill strengthens Safe Work Australia's ability to respond effectively to the challenges that impact health and safety now and in the future.

A better alignment of its functions, that will remain contemporary into the future and not become outdated, will mean it is better placed to respond effectively to emerging work health and safety issues.

The level of consensus that was achieved throughout the consultation process on the role of Safe Work Australia and its functions was very positive and commendable.

It highlights the value all parties involved place on governments and employee and employer representatives taking concerted action on a national scale to reduce the significant social, human and economic cost of work-related death, injury and disease.

This bill demonstrates the Australian government's strong commitment to working collaboratively, with states and territories, employee and employer representatives, to improve the safety of Australia's workplaces and its workers' compensation arrangements.

Debate adjourned.

Mr DICK (Oxley) (09:58): I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017 that this government has introduced to this place. We will support the amendment moved by the member for Jagajaga. This is a bill introduced at the same time that we see inequality at a 75-year high, when wage growth has stalled to an all-time low and when energy costs continue to skyrocket. A matter of minutes ago, the minister came into this place to strip away money from seniors and pensioners who have worked hard their whole lives only to be treated like dirt by this government. We just heard the minister come in here and want to be congratulated for giving a one-off payment but taking away a lifetime payment to many pensioners and seniors in our community.

Let's not be fooled. While Labor will be supporting the one-off energy assistance payment to pensioners, the government has today confirmed and introduced by law that they want to cut the energy supplement. That is a permanent payment which is worth much more to pensioners. Put simply, what we have just witnessed a matter of minutes ago is the government giving on one hand and taking much, much more on the other hand. This is not a win for pensioners.

On this side of the House, Labor recognises that many Australians and seniors are doing it tough. Time and time again, what we have seen is the government making it harder for pensioners to make ends meet and harder for working Australians. Whether it be cutting penalty rates, hiking university fees, the Medicare freeze or a whole range of projects and programs in the budget that do not help pensioners, what we are seeing today is a minor commitment to pensioners but a major cut to thousands of pensioners across Australia. We know that the one-off payment in the legislation that we are debating today will mean a payment of $75 to pensioners, but we will also see as a result of the legislation introduced into this place before I spoke a cut of $375 each and every year to pensioners as part of axing the energy assistance payment.

I mentioned before that I know many seniors and pensioners are doing it tough across the country, but this is in particular for those who rely on assistance from the government to help pay for their skyrocketing energy bills. An analysis by the University of Melbourne's Australian-German Climate and Energy College earlier this year found that the average wholesale electricity price doubled to $134 a megawatt hour last summer, compared with $65 to $67 in the two summers during 2013 and 2014. Yet the government then sees fit to cut $375 to pensioners while energy costs continue to skyrocket.

I have to ask: are those opposite in the same communities that we all walk around in? The same shopping centres that we visit? Or in the same pubs and clubs—all of those areas? Go into one of those clubs in my electorate—the mighty Blue Fin Fishing Club or the Goodna Services Club—and said to a group of pensioners who might be having a nice lunch together, perhaps after having a social activity, and say: 'Do you know what? We're going to give you a $75 payment but on the same day that we do that we're going to introduce legislation to take $375 from you.' I can say that that would not go down very well in my community, and in every single electorate in Australia that would be the same.

So what is it with this government? Wage growth is at an all-time low; their answer is to cut wages. Inequality is at an all-time high; their answer is to cut support. And energy costs continue to rise and their answer is to cut the energy assistance payments. Really, all you can do is to shake your head and say, 'Why won't this government actually hear what is going on in Australia?'

Let's be clear about what this government is proposing with this legislation. There is a one-off payment which is merely a shallow attempt to distract Australians from the fact that this Liberal government wants to cut the energy supplement. Australian pensioners deserve much better than this. The Prime Minister and those opposite will not get away with pulling the wool over the eyes of Australians. Offering a one-off energy assistance payment of $75 to single pensioners while attempting to take $365 a year from single pensioners by removing the energy supplement to new pensioners is not good government; it is deceitful government.

A one-off $75 payment is not the same as $365 assistance every year to help pensioners keep up with increasing energy costs: $75 does not equal $365. The Prime Minister has shown us time and time again that he does not 'get' fairness. I have said it in this place before and in the other place—in the Federation Chamber—that we hear the government talk a lot about fairness. We hear them put that out in materials and in advertising, but we know that they do not believe in fairness. That was the Liberal Party spending $200,000 to get a focus group to tell them that they needed to use the word fairness in their budget!

Only a few weeks ago I was able to host the shadow minister for families and social services and the member for Jagajaga at a seniors forum, where this exact bill was being discussed by members of the community—the issues of cost of living, of energy cost and of people finding it really tough to make ends meet. We met at the Jindalee Bowls Club with Centenary Suburbs residents. Over 200 residents were out in force to make it very clear to me as their federal member and to the shadow minister that they found the rising costs of energy, when every dollar counts, to be a huge impact. Cuts like those that the minister just introduced, whilst we are seeing a once-off payment, simply will not make up that shortfall. The Jindalee Bowls Club is also home to Centenary Meals on Wheels. They do a great job serving pensioners and seniors. We know that the funding for Meals on Wheels is also under question and that there is a lot of pressure from service providers who are worried about the government's commitment.

So, looking at this package and the amendment the shadow minister has moved, and going through those items one by one, in condemning the government's cuts to Australian pensioners we need to look back only a very short time. In that horrific budget in 2014 the government tried to cut pension indexation and leave pensioners $80 a week poorer over 10 years. We remember when the Liberals tried to reset the deeming rate thresholds, changes that would have negatively impacted half a million part pensioners. And who could forget the change to the assets test earlier this year, when the goalposts were shifted on hundreds of thousands of pensioners who carefully planned for their retirement? Almost 100,000 retirees lost their pension, and many more had their payments cut.

This bill, at the same time as trying to pull the wool over the eyes of older Australians, also tries to clean up the mess left by the former Treasurer, Mr Hockey. When the changes to the assets test were introduced, the Treasurer promised that those who lost their pension as a result of the change would be able to keep their concession card. He said:

… anyone who currently has a Pensioner Concession Card will continue to receive a concession card that provides the same benefits …

That was false. That simply did not happen. Instead, former pensioners were issued with Health Care Cards and Commonwealth Senior Health Care Cards, which did not provide the same benefits. For example, without a pensioner concession card, former pensioners were not able to access vital government funded hearing services, and different concessions were applied from state to state. The government did not even bother talking to the states and territories about maintaining these concessions. I know that in my own community pensioner groups rallied, came together to make very clear their position on this breach of faith, this lack of trust that the government thought was the right way to go. We know that fundamentally the Australian community rejected it. Who can forget that famous night in 2014 when the then Treasurer in this government was putting the axe to pensioners, to those most vulnerable? He cranked up the music in his office and said it was the best night of his life. Well, it was the worst night of the lives of pensioners and seniors in our community. Either the former Treasurer forgot to include the maintenance of eligibility for those concessions in his budget or he just did not understand the difference between the two types of cards. Regardless, it goes to show that this government does not care about low-income Australians. Nor does this government care about middle-income Australians. We know from their actions and their policies that their priority is looking after the top end of town and those in big business. On top of all of this, if the government had its way, a retiree who dreamed of having an overseas trip would have their pension cut after just six weeks of travel.

The Prime Minister, the Treasurer, the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Social Services have all said that the only reason these cuts were not in the budget is not that they had a change of heart, not that they listened to the Australian community, not because they would go out to seniors forums like the ones I hosted with shadow minister Jenny Macklin a couple of weeks ago and the shadow age minister last Friday. They did not do any of that. They did not go out and consult. They did not actually listen. They said: 'We couldn't get them through. We couldn't pass these cuts—not because we didn't believe in them and not because we don't think they're great. We couldn't pass them, so we junked them.' They still believe in them. If they had the numbers, they would pass them. If they could, they would lower the living standards of those on low incomes; they would lower the payments to those who rely on them the most.

This is not an ideological shift; this is just a sheer pragmatic shift by a government more worried about their own skin than worried about those who rely on these payments. These cuts are not gone. The ministers in this place, the ministers at the table and the backbenchers in this chamber still want to deliver them. No-one has publicly gone out and said: 'We got it wrong. We shouldn't have gone so hard. We shouldn't have gone so fast.' I have seen all of this tragedy play out over the past couple of years in my community. But pensioners, seniors and others in the community rallied together and made sure that those sorts of cuts were not delivered.

We also know that one of those measures, delivered by then Treasurer Hockey and the former Prime Minister, the member for Warringah, was to increase the pension age to 70. This would mean that Australians would have to work longer than anybody else in the world. I know the government like to be congratulated and like to think this is a fair budget. They go out and say, 'This is being well received in the electorate.' I do not know what planet they are on. You only need to look at the messaging coming out of the community from the nonprofit sector. If they bothered to leave this place and go to the bowls clubs and the service organisations in my electorate and meet with pensioners and seniors groups, they would hear a completely different message, where people in our community are doing it tough and need support. That is what the Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, does every day of the week, criss-crossing the country going to town hall meetings week in, week out, listening to Middle Australia, listening to regional Australia and ensuring that pensioners and seniors, particularly, get the fair go they deserve.

As I mentioned earlier regarding this bill and these changes, I was privileged to host the shadow minister for ageing, the member for Franklin, in my electorate last Friday. We visited two aged-care facilities and retirement locations in my electorate—a great new location in Springfield, and Sinnamon Village, a wonderful retirement village and nursing home facility at Jindalee. We heard from residents and staff about the enormous pressure and strains that those in aged care are under, particularly seniors who are relying on government support.

So, whilst this bill is welcome for a one-off hit, a one-off payment, it does not go far enough and it simply does not undo the damage that this government has done to seniors and aged people in our community. They deserve dignity, they deserve respect, but more importantly they deserve a government that is on their side. This government has proved time and time again that it is not on the side of senior Australians.

Ms CHESTERS (Bendigo) (10:13): As previous speakers on this side of the House have said, we agreed to support this bill, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017, because it is some evidence that the government is trying to help those on fixed incomes and those on the smallest incomes in our electorates. But we need to make sure that the government is held to account for what is happening and remind people about the con the government is trying to put forward in the budget.

First off, the one-off energy assistance payment of $75 a week for singles to help with their energy bills is welcome. Any good MP who, when they are not in this place, is out there talking to their constituents and holding their listening posts and their street stalls would know that the cost of energy is a major concern. We are about to hit winter. In regional Victorian areas like Bendigo, winter is particularly cold. The energy policy crisis that we are in because we are exporting too much of our own gas is putting pressure on the energy market and therefore driving up power bills. So $75 per single and $62.50 for each member of a couple is welcome because it will give some people and some households relief with their energy bills this year.

I should say, however, that this is not a silver bullet solution. This is not a long-term solution to the energy policy crisis we have in our country. It is a one-off payment. They are saying, 'Here's a little bit of cash to distract you from the fact that we have no long-term plan to address skyrocketing energy bills.' At the same time as giving a small relief to households, they are taking from those who are about to come onto these sorts of payments. What the government have also put forward in their budget is to scrap the energy supplement for new pensioners and people on new payments. So whilst this one-off payment is good news for our aged pensioners, our disability support pensioners, our parenting payment single recipients and our veterans' payments recipients, it is a one-off. People are not fools. They say: 'Great, that helps me this year, but that doesn't help me next year. It doesn't help me in the long term.'

My electorate, the Bendigo electorate, is like many regional electorates. We have a significant number of people on fixed incomes or on some form of government payments. We have a large proportion of people on the aged pension. We have single parents and a number of people on the disability pension. One pensioner said to me on the weekend: 'The cost for me turning on my power is the same as for my next-door neighbour. Whilst my pensioner discount does help, there is a point where it doesn't help because our bills have gone up so much.' Bills are skyrocketing and $75 will help, but it will not really get on top of the massive increases they are paying.

The other part of this bill that I need to draw people's attention to is where the government is trying to clean up a mistake they made back when the former Treasurer in this place made a bit of a mistake on budget night. Now we are seeing the reinstatement of the pensioner concession card. This is for people who lost their pensioner concession card because of the new pensioner asset test that began on 1 January 2017.

I think what is really frustrating about the fact that the government has only brought this forward now is that since that budget night when the former Treasurer promised this and up until people lost their pensioner concession card—a few years now—people on this side of the House have been saying: 'What are you doing about this? Because of the pension asset test changes people will lose this concession card,' and the government did nothing. The government did nothing when pensioner groups got active about this to say: 'We will lose it. There is a significant proportion of people in our community who will lose this pension concession card.' Still, the government did nothing about this. It was not until people lost it that they went, 'Oh, this has created a problem.' It is the growing mantra of this government: pretend it is not an issue, say it is not an issue, stick your head in the sand about the issue, and only when people start to complain go, 'Okay, maybe we need to look at this.'

The government estimates that approximately 92,000 pensioners lost the concessions card in this period alone. However, as people's retirement income starts to grow because we have had superannuation and as fewer people will qualify for the pension, in the future there would have been more pensioners not eligible for this card. It actually challenges the government to rethink their entire approach towards retirement income. I am proud, as all Labor members are, that it was a Labor government that first introduced compulsory superannuation. The vision was that throughout somebody's working life they would save enough through their super contributions to have a decent retirement through their own retirement savings. That was first introduced in 1992 by former Prime Minister Paul Keating, and it was a great reform. It was something that working people, that the unions and that Labor had long championed.

For Australian workers to get to a place where they have enough to retire on, they need to have had a working life of superannuation savings. We are talking about my generation. I started working in 1994. We hope that when people now in their 30s retire—as is the government's wish, when they are 70, but at the moment if they retire at 67—they will have earned enough in their working life to have enough in superannuation to retire. If we acknowledge that it will take a generation of workers to get to that point, for those who between now and then, unless they are full age pensioners, there will be a sliding scale of people who will have a mix of super and pension.

The problem in the approach of this government is that they want to knock out people who may have a mix—they want to force a group of pensioners back to the poverty line. It has been well established by a number of groups, by research, that the level of single pension that people are trying to survive on is well below the poverty line. We have older Australians currently living in poverty. Our pension rate is too low. People may have been trying to supplement their pension with their super to get themselves above that point, but this government has taken the axe to them and cut back the assets test to say, 'No, we think you are millionaires and you all must live below the poverty line.' It was purely a budget save, and I am very disappointed, like many people in my electorate, that the Greens got on board with this idea from the government, that they backed the government in. The Greens, the Liberals and the Nats all said at the time that millionaires should not get pensions. What they did not talk about were the teachers and the nurses; they did not talk about the people who worked in trades who were not millionaires—they had some superannuation savings because of collective agreements that they had negotiated, but not enough to provide them with what could be considered a decent retirement income. They are the people who lost when this government changed the pension assets test.

We do welcome the fact that at least this group of pensioners will get their concession card back. The cost of services in the regions is expensive. Pensioners in my part of the world do enjoy their discounts on public transport—every year the state of Victoria sends them a couple of free tickets for V/Line services to go to Melbourne. They can use them when they like—it could be for medical appointments or it could be to catch up with grandchildren; it is their chance to go to Melbourne. What is really frustrating about what the government did, without consultation with the states, is that when they stopped issuing the card there was a knock-on effect. People came to speak to us about the fact that they lost discounts on their rates notices, and then councils had to scramble to see what they could do. We had people come and say that they lost discounts on all forms of public transport, and concessions on their energy bills. The government just did not think through the consequences of scrapping this card for a group of people. The frustrating thing is that it has taken this long for the government to realise their error and reinstate the concession card. It is like the government do not trust people when organisations tell them what the impact of their decisions will be. They wait for the impact to happen—they do not trust the organisations, they do not trust their own department and, they do not trust people in the community when they come up and say, 'When this kicks in on 1 January, I will be affected.' That is what is disappointing: the government, knowing full well the impact of scrapping the concession card on this group of pensioners, did nothing, until now, to fix it. I mentioned that this government's once-off payment is not the same as $365 of assistance every year to help pensioners keep up with the increasing energy costs. It is not just pensioners that they choose to scrap this energy supplement for; it is people who are on Newstart and people who are on youth allowance. This government, again, is forcing the most vulnerable in our community, who need our support, further into poverty.

These are the people who are seeking support from our welfare and relief agencies. In my own area of Bendigo, our welfare agencies and emergency relief agencies report a 40 per cent increase in people seeking help over the last financial year. This year, so far, it is growing. They state that the reasons for this are the cost of energy bills, the costs of car registration and insurance, and, if those in need of help have children, the cost of children going to school. The agencies are saying that single pensioners, in particular, are doing it incredibly tough—people who are just trying to get by. Without food hampers—without emergency relief food—they literally would not survive. Max at the UnitingCare at Kangaroo Flat does an amazing job in reaching out to this group. He has people who rock up to say, 'I've just spent all of my pension on my rent and on my energy bills, can you help me out? Max is not alone. There is also UnitingCare in Forest Street, Bendigo and St Vincent de Paul in Bendigo. These organisations, every single day, are supporting people with food hampers and emergency relief, because people are being crippled by the cost of living.

This is so typical of this government—caring about the top end of town whilst putting pressure on people on the smallest of incomes. Coming up on 1 July, we have a government which will give millionaires a tax cut—$16,400 a year—while standing by and doing nothing to stop penalty rates being cut. Retail workers could lose up to $6,000 a year, or $77 a week. It may not sound like a lot to a millionaire or a government backbencher, with what they earn, but to someone on the smallest of incomes it is a lot. It is a government that continues to do nothing to support those on the lowest incomes. One pensioner said to me: '$75? Really, that's it? That will help pay a fraction of my bill. A once off—is it a bribe? Are they trying to get me to be quiet?' People will see this for what it is. Whilst we support it and welcome it, it is not enough. The government is really out of touch with those on the smallest of incomes. It is really out of touch with people who need ongoing and continuous help. It is a government that is caught up in its own rhetoric and thinks that people will be taken as fools.

Mr GEORGANAS (Hindmarsh) (10:28): I too rise to speak about the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017. We will be supporting this bill, but we really want to put on the record that on this side of the House—not just us, but our Australian pensioners—we are sick and tired of seeing pensioners being used as political footballs at every budget. It is unfair to treat people in this way. Our pensioners in our community have paid their taxes all their lives. They have worked hard most of their lives in jobs that were labour intensive—because of the technology in the days when they started work. Some have even fought in wars to protect this country. They have built the foundations that we live our lives on today, and I think we live pretty good lives here in Australia. We owe it all to the generation before us. We owe it to them because they built this country, and now we treat them with great disrespect. Also, these are the people who put in place, a generation before us, our workers' rights—the rights that we take for granted. We see many other things that affect the hard-earned work that they have done, including the rights that they put in place during their working lives. We see penalty rates being cut, for example. They may not be affected directly because they are now on a pension, but it irks them and it upsets them because they think of the standards that they had when they worked and they look at the standards that our workers have to put up with today. All these things affect these people.

In my electorate I speak to pensioners. I have one of the oldest electorates in the country. Over 20 per cent are 65 or over. So I speak with lots of pensioners on a regulator basis, and they tell me that they are sick of being used as political footballs, especially by this government, at every budget. They are made to feel like they are a burden, welfare recipients, a cost and a nuisance, which is not correct, because these people built the foundations that we live our lives on today. Certainly on this side of the House we will not have it. They have contributed to our society and to our economy, and they deserve better. So, while we welcome the fact that we will get the very, very modest one-off payment that is outlined in this bill, it certainly does not compensate for the cuts and the hardships that pensioners have had to endure under this government over the last four years.

We remember in 2013 in the lead-up to the election when the member for Warringah, the former Leader of the Opposition and then Prime Minister, made a promise that there would be 'no cuts to pensioners', and 'no changes to the pension'. What did we see in the very first budget? A whole range of cuts. I will go through them now. The Abbott-Turnbull government's record on pensions is nothing short of a disgrace when it comes to our pensioners. In every budget since they have been in government, they have handed down their proposed cuts to the pension. And that is four budgets in a row—not one; not a one-off; not two; not three—at every single budget there has been some detrimental effect on our pensioners. This government has no shame when it comes to doing over our pensioners.

While they are doing this, at the very same time, they are proposing a $65 billion tax cut for the top end of town, the richest people of Australia. Yet our most vulnerable and those that have built the foundations that we live our lives on are enduring cuts. I do not see how that is fair. We have a government that throws the word 'fairness' around continually. You will hear it during question time, in speeches and in press conferences. They must be tracking it through polling that the word 'fair' or 'fairness' resonates well. You hear it continually. But what is so fair about cutting from pensioners and giving a $65 billion cut to Australia's richest people? There is nothing fair in that—absolutely nothing. Not only does the Turnbull government want to raise the pension age to 70, he is making it the oldest pension age in the developed world. Where are the jobs anyway where these people will work? And how do we expect people, especially people who work in labour intensive jobs, to keep on going until they are 70?

They also want to scrap the energy supplement—and this is the heart of this bill—making pensioners, carers and Newstart recipients $550 a year worse off. And this comes on top of the harsh cuts to pensioners as a result of the government's new assets test that we saw earlier. They are constantly nipping away at the eligibility for pensioners. With the energy supplement making pensioners, carers and Newstart recipients $550 a year worse off—can you tell me: how can that be fair? This government is hanging our pensioners out to dry. They do not deserve to be treated so poorly.

Schedule 1 of the energy assistance payment—let's have a look at it. What is Schedule 1 of the energy assistance payment? I will tell you what it is. It is just a smokescreen. It is a smokescreen to distract us from the fact that this government still wants to abolish the energy supplement. They still want to abolish the energy supplement which assists people with their energy bills. We know that energy bills have quadrupled since they have been in government. They have quadrupled in terms of the costs of supplying energy to your house.

The government will carry on about the carbon tax and a whole range of other things, but what have they put in place? What have they done to ensure that our pensioners have some form of assistance and to ensure that we have a market out there that keeps the prices down? They have done nothing about it. They are happy to bang on about coal and a whole range of other things, but energy prices have gone up—which is hurting our pensioners—because the government have not acted to keep us up to date with renewables and a whole range of other things that are taking place around the world in markets and industries that we are falling behind in.

If the government were really interested in ensuring that energy prices were down, we would be looking at a different mechanism to ensure that there are more players in the market with a mix of renewables and a whole range of other energy suppliers in order to have a good cap on prices so pensioners in my electorate and everyone else's electorates are not hurt. The government will not get away with pulling the wool over the eyes of our pensioners. They can see through this and they are already raising it with me and with other colleagues. As I said, these pensioners were hardworking once upon a time.

In this bill, the government are offering a one-off energy assistance payment of $75—a one-off of $75—and at the same time are taking away $365 a year from single pensioners by removing the energy supplement to new pensioners. My maths might not be 100 per cent but a one-off $75 payment is not the same as a $365 in assistance every year to help pensioners to keep up with increasing energy costs. They are offering a $75 payment and what was in place was $365 in assistance every year to help pensioners with the increasing energy costs—and, by the way, the government have done noting to ensure that energy costs do not keep on rising. These sums just do not add up. As I said in other speeches, it is like setting a fire, being the arsonist, lighting the match, and then calling triple 0 and getting the fire brigade and wanting a pat on the back because you are a hero. Well, it does not work that way. Our pensioners will see through this and they will vote accordingly at the next election.

We on this side will oppose the government's attempt to remove the energy supplement from the most vulnerable Australians who will be affected by this. The 2017 budget confirms that the government still want to cut this energy supplement. The Prime Minister likes to say that he is all about fairness—and I spoke about that—but there is no way that there is anything fair about this. They talk about fairness, but at the same time that they are hitting the most vulnerable people—cutting from them; taking away from them—they are proposing, pushing and trying to bully through every day that $65 billion tax cut to Australia's highest earners, richest people and big businesses that pay very little tax to begin with. If the Prime Minister really cared about the living expenses of vulnerable Australian, he would no be trying to abolish this energy supplement. The payment will be $75 for singles and $62 each for each member of a couple.

Schedule 2 provides for the reinstatement of the pensioner concession cards. I have to say that the government's previous attempt to get rid of the concession cards was very mean-spirited. But, thanks to the efforts of Australian pensioners around the country who lobbied their MPs—and I suspect many on the other side—the government has been forced to reinstate it. The government has been forced to overturn a very cruel measure that it had in place, after failing to keep then Treasurer Joe Hockey's promise in his budget where he said that no-one would lose their Commonwealth pensioner card. This shows that when we work together—and Australians do work together—we can actually achieve results. Many, many pensioners in my electorate have written to me and spoken to me at street corner meetings and at forums that we had on this issue to tell me just how unhappy they were about their concession cards.

When the changes to the pension asset test began on 1 January 2017 many pensioners ceased to be eligible for their payment and they also lost their concession card. I am really happy to say that almost 1,000 pensioners in my electorate of Hindmarsh who lost their pension following this government's asset test change will get their concession card back through this bill. I am very pleased about that, because many of them wrote to me. I received many emails and had many discussions and phone conversations about this. Through the campaign that they ran, they have managed a good result.

It certainly does not make up, though, for all the other cuts that they have to endure. Let us face it: this government is only doing this as a result of pressure that we on this side of the House and pensioners have exerted on them. The let us not forget that, when the changes to the asset test were introduced, the then Treasurer Joe Hockey promised that those who lost their pension as a result of the change would be able to keep their concession card. That turned out to be a furphy, didn't it? To quote the words of the previous Treasurer Joe Hockey,:

… anyone who currently has a Pensioner Concession Card will continue to receive a concession card that provides the same benefits …

Was that true? Certainly not. Instead, former pensioners were issued with healthcare cards and Commonwealth senior healthcare cards, which did not provide the same benefits.

I was asked by the media yesterday about the polls. My response was that you do not have to be a rocket scientist to know that this government is travelling so badly. When you have a senior member of the government promising that Commonwealth concession cards will not be taken away and then they get taken away, it is no wonder they are in a state of disarray. For example, without that pensioner concession card former pensioners are not able to access vital government funded hearing services, and we all know that the minimum cost would be around $3,000 for hearing devices from different states. It depends on where you are. The loss of the pensioner concession card is a very cruel double blow to many former pensioners with modest incomes. I am very pleased that pressure from this side and pressure from pensioner groups around Australia has changed the government's proposal. The government must think Australia has a very short memory. As I said, I am sure these people have not forgotten, and you cannot pull the wool over their eyes.

I remember in 2014 when the government tried to cut pension indexation and leave pensioners $80 a week poorer over 10 years. This is the stuff that has been happening while at the same time they are still pushing that $65 billion tax cut for the high-end of town. I also remember when the government tried to reset the deeming rate threshold—changes that would have negatively impacted half a million part pensioners around the country. These are not people on wealthy incomes; they are part pensioners. They rely on a part pension and a bit of modest savings that they have. I also remember when this government changed the assets test and shifted the goalposts on hundreds of thousands of pensioners who had carefully planned their retirement. All of a sudden they had the goalposts changed. At that point 100,000 retirees lost their part pension or pension and many more had their payments reduced—many hundreds in my the electorate, who lobbied me and still do.

God forbid for a retiree to dare to aspire to an overseas trip. If the PM has his way, their payments will be cut after six weeks overseas. It is even worse for migrant pensioners or people who have settled in Australia from overseas. If you are a pensioner who was not born in Australia and you wanted to visit family and friends overseas, you pension will be reduced in line with the time that you have lived in Australia as though your contribution was worth less. They say these cuts are gone for good. (Time expired)

Mr CONROY (Shortland) (10:43): It is good to have an opportunity to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017 and to join with my Labor colleagues in highlighting and condemning the appalling record of the coalition relating to their treatment of the pension. I am proud to be a member of the Labor Party—a Labor Party that, through the great Prime Minister Andrew Fisher introduced the old-age pension over 100 years ago. The age pension is a compact with senior Australians that says that we commit to giving you a dignified retirement. It is a compact that says that we commit to ensuring that every Australian has the ability to retire and live their final years in some dignity and not be left to starve on the streets, as still occurs in some other nations around the world today. It is a compact that the Liberal and National parties do not understand. It is a compact that they repeatedly attempt to break, and without the Labor Party holding them to account they will try and break it at every opportunity.

Before discussing the energy assistance payment, I want to highlight the asset test changes introduced by the Liberals and Nationals, which is related to the concession card aspect of this bill. This change cut the pension for 330,000 elderly Australians. Approximately 3,000 of my constituents in Shortland had their pensions reduced or cancelled, and one quarter of the residents in Shortland are over the age of 60. So these changes had a very significant impact on the electorate that I represent. I am very proud to have voted against this legislation, to have voted against the pensions asset test change that cut the pension for 3,000 of my constituents. This policy shifted the goalposts for tens of thousands of pensioners who had in good faith planned for their retirement, and nearly 100,000 retirees lost their pension completely. The government should know that my constituents who were affected by these changes are still incredibly angry about this issue—and I know this, because I have met with them and seen how distressed and upset they are. In fact, at every single seniors expo I hold in Shortland, this is still raised as a massive issue.

These changes are even worse because of the direct betrayal of a promise the government had previously made relating to the pensioner concession charge. When these asset changes were introduced, Joe Hockey stated very clearly that those who lost their pension as a result of the change would be able to keep their concession cards. He said:

Anyone who currently has a Pensioner Concession Card will continue to receive a concession card that provides the same benefits …

This was a blatant lie. As I said previously, my constituents are very angry about it. So Labor welcomes the provision in this bill which provides for the reinstatement of the pensioner concession card for those who ceased to be eligible for the card as a result of the asset test changes on 1 January this year. But it should be noted that the government has only done this with the utmost reluctance and only after concerted pressure by pensioner groups and the Labor Party. This is another clear example of how out of touch the Prime Minister and his government are with the realities of the day-to-day lives of pensioners, retirees and, indeed, all ordinary Australians. As I have noted previously, given the background of the Prime Minister and his substantial wealth, this is not surprising, but it is still no excuse to attack the living standards and quality of life of the pensioners that I represent in this place.

Let there be no mistake that the government is cutting the pension. The introduction of the energy assistance payment is a blatant attempt by the Liberals and Nationals to disguise the fact that they are cutting the pension by abolishing the energy supplement. This bill provides a one-off energy assistance payment of $75 to single pensioners, while attempting to take $365 a year from single pensioners by removing the energy supplement to new pensioners. This might not be a significant amount for the Prime Minister but it is a very substantial amount for pensioners in Cardiff, Windale and Lake Munmorah—in fact, every suburb that I represent. I state again that the Prime Minister and his government are so out of touch that they do not comprehend the harm they are doing to pensioners, who deserve to be treated so much better.

The truth is that the $75 one-off payment to single pensioners is welcome but it does not begin to touch the sides of the energy crisis and the rise in energy bills that pensioners and, in fact, all Australians are confronting right now because of this government's incompetence. Wholesale energy prices have doubled on the coalition's watch and the cost of energy is a major concern for my constituents, particularly those on fixed incomes. The government is trying to con them with a one-off payment of $75. If this government were truly worried about the impact of energy prices on pensioners, they would do two simple things: firstly, they would support an emissions intensity scheme for the electricity sector—an emissions intensity scheme supported by basically every single stakeholder in the energy sector, whether it is the networks, the generators or the consumers. In fact, the government's own regulator supports an emissions intensity scheme. Basically anyone with a pulse who has any knowledge of the electricity sector, other than this government, is supporting an emissions intensity scheme. Why are they doing that? For two simple reasons: firstly, it will provide investment certainty that will unlock $48 billion of investment in the energy sector, which is so vitally needed; and, secondly, it will place downward pressure on electricity prices. Because of the way an EIS works, it subsidises the marginal producer in the energy market, which is gas. Gas sets the price for electricity, so by subsidising gas an EIS will actually reduce electricity prices.

Modelling commissioned by the government's own regulator and conducted by the government's favourite energy modeller, Danny Price, has found that an EIS will reduce electricity prices by $15 billion—$15 billion! So if the government were really interested in reducing electricity prices for pensioners and all Australians they would embrace an EIS, because that is the quickest, simplest and most efficient way of reducing electricity prices in this country.

The second thing they would do is to solve the gas crisis—a gas crisis that has seen incredibly high increases in the price of gas both for Australian manufacturers and Australian consumers of energy through gas. The government have been asleep at the wheel on this issue. For four years they have done nothing about the gas crisis, which has been barrelling down the line. In fact, they have made a couple of headline announcements recently on this issue: Prime Minister Turnbull promised that that he would halve the price of gas in this country. He said that he could get the price of gas down from $20 a gigajoule to $10 a gigajoule overnight, but he has not done anything concrete to achieve this promise. He has made a lot of hot air but he has done nothing to solve the gas crisis that the government have played a role in contributing to. So while I welcome these one-off energy assistance payments, if the government were really serious about solving the energy crisis and reducing electricity prices they would embrace an EIS and solve the gas crisis.

But whilst discussing energy assistance payments provided by the government, I want to note that Labor will still oppose the government's attempts to remove the energy supplement from the most vulnerable Australians. The 2017 budget papers confirm the government's determination to abolish this payment. The Prime Minister and his government are intent on creating a two-tier system for social security payments relating to the aged pension. That goes so very much against the fundamental Australian values of equality and a fair go. Creating two classes of aged pension is just wrong. Those Liberals and Nationals in this House who will vote for that change should be ashamed.

When I speak with pensioners affected by this change I proudly tell them that I and the Labor Party will continue to vote against these cruel cuts to those on fixed incomes. I recently ran a series of budget forums, briefing my constituents about what was in this budget. When I highlighted that the two zombie measures from the 2014 budget that remained in it were, first off, increasing the pension age to 70—the highest in the developed world—and, secondly, creating a two-class pension system, they were aghast. This was not just pensioners who were going to be affected by this change, or potential pensioners, it was existing pensioners, who were horrified that there would be a two-tier pension system.

The government has been unable to answer the question about why there should be two classes of pensioners. What will a new pensioner face in terms of reduced electricity prices that an existing pensioner does not face? It is blatantly inequitable and it is blatantly an attack on the universality of our social security system. It breaks that compact that I talked about previously, about providing a dignified retirement for all Australians.

Labor will continue to work with pensioner groups and the crossbench to ensure that the government does not prevail with this significant and unfair cut. I dare all coalition members of this House to actually go to their constituencies to explain why there should be a two-tier pension system, why new pensioners should be treated as second-class pensioners and why Australians need to work to the age of 70 to receive a pension. I would submit that the people who support this clearly do not know many manual labourers—or nurses, for that matter. Anyone whose job requires intense physical activity is going to be very unlikely to be able to work until the age of 70.

Labor will continue to work with pensioner groups to oppose this. The crossbench should also know that Labor will hold them to account if they side with the government and vote to cut the pension, because the crossbench has a pretty sordid history on these issues. The Greens were the only reason the government got through the reductions in the pension assets threshold. The Greens did a dirty deal—

Mr Perrett: Shame!

Mr CONROY: The Greens, shamefully, did a dirty deal with the coalition to cut the pensions for 300,000 Australians—and for what? What did they get in return for this sellout of some of the poorest Australians in this country? They got a commitment to an inquiry. That was worth reducing the income of 300,000 Australians and throwing 100,000 Australians off the pension.

In speaking on this bill, I also want to draw the attention of the House to the government's disgraceful and shameful record relating to social security payments. In their first budget, the government tried to cut pension indexation and leave pensioners $80 a week poorer. This is from a mob who is currently giving millionaires and big business a tax cut. It clearly identifies who they govern for and the priorities they have. I am proud that we defeated that change. In fact, I am proud that was a key reason the Liberals rolled their Prime Minister and replaced him with the member for Warringah. We will continue to fight for a fair treatment of pensioners.

I have already referred to the asset test changes. The government now wants to cut payments to retirees after six weeks of travelling overseas. Surely, elderly Australians who have worked hard and saved are entitled to a holiday. The government has said that their most recent budget is about fairness, but their most senior ministers—the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the finance minister—have all confirmed that the only reason they are not pursuing their draconian cuts to other measures is they cannot pass them in the Senate. Let us be clear on this matter: the Liberals and Nationals still believe in these cruel cuts to the pension, but they have been stifled from enacting them by the Labor Party in the Senate. They have, all of a sudden, discovered the concept of fairness. Australians will not be fooled by the government. They know that this government discovered the concept of fairness through a focus group and that the Labor Party is the only political party that delivers a fair go.

In concluding, let me reiterate that I am proud to be a member of a party that supports the pension, that created the pension, that defends the pension, that protects the pension against the inequitable attacks by the coalition. In conclusion, the Labor Party does welcome the government's backdown regarding the pensioner concession card. We will continue to highlight that the government are cutting the pension. They would have made even more severe cuts over the previous years but have been prevented in doing so by the Labor Party. The provision of the age pension and social security payments in general is incredibly important to ordinary Australians. The government just do not understand this.

I commend the bill to the House.

Mr PERRETT (Moreton—Opposition Whip) (10:56): I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017. I commend the member for Shortland for his contribution, even though he has some dubious tastes in football teams! Labor supports this bill. Labor will always support Australians who are doing it tough.

But let us be clear about what this bill really is. It is a mere distraction by the Turnbull government—a mere leisure domain. It is a legislative equivalent of smoke and mirrors. It is the sleazy grin of a snake oil salesman while he fleeces you. Most Australian pensioners are too smart to be taken in by this cheap con trick. Prime Minister Turnbull thinks, seriously, that if he gives pensioners a one-off payment of $75 they will not notice him taking $365 a year from them every year. This is a bad late-night TV ad—you know, 'We'll throw in some matching steak knives, but then we're going to bill you 30 bucks a month forever.' This is shear arrogance coming out of Point Piper and shows a Prime Minister who is simply out of touch.

Despite what he says, Prime Minister Turnbull has no idea about fairness. He can say the word over and over again but never actually feel it. His focus group research says, 'If you can fake fairness, you'll have it made.' Well, Australian pensioners are on to him. How is it fair to expect that pensioners should be thanking the Prime Minister for giving them a $75 one-off payment while, at the same time, trying to cut the energy supplement, which will leave pensioners $365 worse off every year? That is not fair. It is a shocking way to treat Australians who are already doing it tough. We know that. But we should not be surprised. The Liberals have never ever cared about pensioners. People on the age pension have worked hard all their lives and saved hard. They deserve better from our government. Sadly, they are being treated like beggars in the street—expected to be grateful if the government throws a few coins their way. Pensioners will be worse off under the Turnbull government if this legislation goes through. This one-off $75 payment will go nowhere near making up for the axing of the energy supplement. As I said, that will cost pensioners $365 every year.

We know that there is no fat when it comes to pensioners' lifestyle. The pension payment does not allow for a lavish lifestyle at all. It barely covers the necessities of life. I remember doorknocking a couple of pensioners last year in the lead-up to the election. I remember one guy in Tarragindi in particular. He was saying how he only turned his hot water system on every couple of days. Brisbane winters are not the same as Canberra winters; nevertheless, it broke my heart to think that a guy who had worked hard all his life had to make decisions like that. And $365 a year less is an awful lot when you are living that sort of lifestyle on a pension. It can be the difference between being able to have an extra blanket in winter or going cold; the difference between eating a healthy diet of good quality, fresh food or eating the cheap and nasty stuff; the difference between leaving your home or becoming a hermit. Every cent matters to pensioners.

Labor understands this. It was Labor who first introduced the pension system into the Australian parliament. There was no social security system in Australia at the beginning of the 20th century. People who needed assistance relied on charitable relief by voluntary organisations—in some cases, with the benefit of government grants. So there was basically no social safety net. The sick poor or neglected children, old people who were destitute and women who had been deserted or had fallen pregnant were the most in need of the limited charitable assistance. The unemployed were assisted by grants of wages or rations in return for relief work provided by the government of the day.

In 1909 it was a Labor government that created our pension system, only eight years after Federation. In June 1908, Labor exercised the power granted to the Commonwealth upon Federation to legislate in respect of age and invalid pensions. Labor introduced means tested, flat rate age and invalid pensions. These new pensions, which were financed from general revenue, came into operation in July 1909 and December 1910 under Andrew Fisher's Labor government. The new pension was paid to men from age 65; it was paid to women from age 60, but not until December 1910.

Obviously, there have been many changes in Australia since 1910. The population has expanded. Our standard of living has improved. Our health care has improved—to a large extent, due to another Labor initiative, Medibank, and then Medicare. Our life expectancy has increased: a baby boy born in 1910 had a life expectancy of only 55.2 years, but a baby boy born in 2015 has a life expectancy of 80.4 years and a baby girl even longer. People live longer, and the period of time beyond their working life has increased. It now costs more to sustain a person beyond their working life, and there are many reasons why people have not accumulated enough savings to carry them through.

Compulsory superannuation was introduced by the Paul Keating government in July 1992. Prior to that, unless you had an income substantial enough to allow you to create a nest egg—and, sadly, there were many people, and families in particular, that could not—you were destined to eventually be on a pension after retirement. It was how the system worked, prior to compulsory superannuation. Every worker paid taxes, and that allowed the government to look after those who could not afford to adequately look after themselves in retirement. People worked hard and saved hard, but that did not always guarantee that they would have enough money to see them through their autumn years when they could no longer work. So that is why Labor introduced compulsory superannuation.

The superannuation guarantee system was part of a major reform package addressing Australia's retirement income policies and challenges. Labor, in a visionary way, correctly anticipated that there would be a major demographic shift in the coming decades that would result in an increase in age pension payments and would place an unaffordable strain on the Australian economy—particularly as the baby boomers made that transition. Labor introduced a three-pillars approach: a safety net, consisting of a means tested government age pension system; private savings, generated through compulsory contributions to superannuation; and then voluntary savings, through superannuation and other investments. The superannuation guarantee is a great system, and this nation now has the third-biggest managed fund in the world: $2.2 trillion and rising—not bad for a small nation of only 23 million people.

But we need to remember that compulsory superannuation was not available until 1992. So people reaching their current retirement age of 65 this year were already 40 when the superannuation guarantee came in, so half of their working life had already passed. People who are currently receiving the age pension have had even less working life to accumulate superannuation. There are other reasons people may not have been able to accumulate enough superannuation to see them through their retirement years—for example, people may not have had steady employment during their working life; women may have taken time out of the workforce to care for their families and raise children; workers perhaps have been in sectors transformed by the digital revolution and changes in manufacturing and the like. So it is very arrogant of a government to assume that everyone has had the opportunity to accumulate enough superannuation to set up a Cayman Islands account and will be able to live comfortably in retirement. A good government understands this. But most pensioners, including past pensioners, would consider 'living comfortably' as being able to afford safe, secure housing, to eat nutritious food and to occasionally be able to see family and friends. These are things that most Australians would think every person in our lucky country has the right to enjoy, especially after 25 years of uninterrupted growth and economic success.

There is absolutely no doubt that the Superannuation Guarantee was a great Labor policy success; it was a solution to a problem that was identified. Through Labor's initiative, Australians have accumulated more than $2.2 trillion—and rising—in superannuation assets. Of course, that balance sheet would look a whole lot better if the Howard government had not abandoned the Keating government's 15 per cent Superannuation Guarantee way back in 1996. That myopic decision has cost the average Australian worker about $250,000 in accumulated superannuation. The government's decision to abandon the previous Labor government's Superannuation Guarantee rise to 12 per cent has further eroded the future retirement savings of Australians. Compulsory superannuation contributions have been frozen by the Abbott-Turnbull government at 9.5 per cent until 2021.

The Labor architect of the Superannuation Guarantee, former Prime Minister Paul Keating, has described that decision by the coalition government as representing 'nothing other than the wilful sabotage of the nation's universal savings scheme, and sabotage for reasons only of prejudice'. We can also see it in the coalition's misguided attempts on industry funds, which are outperforming the retail funds; it is certainly very short sighted.

The three pillared approach introduced by the Keating Labor government, vandalised by the Howard government and further undermined by the Abbott-Turnbull government is now a very wobbly tripod indeed. By way of confirmation that the Turnbull government is completely out of touch, a government that fundamentally does not understand pensions, it wants to increase the pension age to 70. That might be fine if you are a barrister, but it is a lot tougher if you are a brickies labourer, a nurse or someone who uses their body for lifting and the like. The Finance Minister confirmed in Senate estimates last week that increasing the pension age to 70 is 'a measure they remain committed to'. He said it remained government policy. If that occurs, Australia will have the oldest pension age in the developed world. Builders, tradies, nurses and farmers would have to continue doing what is sometimes backbreaking work until they are 70 before they would be eligible for the age pension. This policy shows a complete disconnect between the government and ordinary working Australians.

Sadly, we have seen this before with the Turnbull government. This bill will reinstate the pensioner concession cards to some former pensioners who became ineligible for the cards after the changes to the pension assets test. This will correct what was a bungle by a government who does not understand the pension system and does not fundamentally understand or care about pensioners. Joe Hockey, the former Treasurer, told Australians that 'anyone who currently has a pensioner concession card will continue to receive a concession card that provides the same benefits'. That was a quote from the cigar-smoking Treasurer. Sadly, it was not true; it was a lie. It was up there with the Medicare safety net commitment. Remember that rock-solid, ironclad guarantee given by the former Health Minister Abbott, now the Banquo of the backbench? It was not the truth, according to the former Treasurer. Former pensioners were issued with health care cards and Commonwealth seniors cards, which did not provide the same benefits. Former pensioners were no longer able to access vital government funded hearing services. Former pensioners, who are living on modest means, suffered a cruel blow with the loss of benefits. Finally realising the error of their policy, they have now reinstated those pensioner concession cards to those that ceased to be eligible for those cards. We should be thankful for small mercies, I guess, but it does not change the fact that the Turnbull government does not understand pensions or pensioners, does not care about then and perhaps never has.

In 2014 the Liberals tried to cut pension indexation and leave pensioners $80 a week poorer over 10 years. The Liberals tried to reset the deeming rate thresholds. That would have had a devastating impact on half a million part pensioners. The Liberals changed the assets test and almost 100,000 retirees lost their pension and many more had their payments reduced. The Liberals tried to prevent pensioner retirees from travelling overseas for more than six weeks to spend time with their families overseas. The member for Warringah promised in 2013 before the election that there would be no changes to the pension. We could not trust his government then and we still cannot trust the person responsible for the coup that removed that Prime Minister. If the Turnbull government thinks they will get away with it, they will make cuts to the pension in an instant. Pensioners and Labor are awake to them and we will not let pensioners be treated with contempt.

Labor understands pensions. Labor fundamentally understands fairness. It is in our DNA. It was Labor that created our pension system in 1909 and built universal superannuation in 1992. Labor has not stopped there. In terms of pension reforms, between September 2009 and 2013 there was an increase in the maximum rate of pension of around $207 per fortnight for singles and $236 per fortnight for couples combined. That was a Labor initiative. It is Labor that will continue to protect retirement income for all Australians and ensure the financial security of older Australians. Labor understands that pensioners have worked hard all their lives and have contributed so much to make this country great. Australian pensioners deserve the dignity of a decent retirement. They do not deserve to be betrayed and made to feel like a burden by the Liberal Party and Prime Minister Turnbull. We have made it clear that Labor will continue to fight for Australian pensioners and oppose any attacks by this uncaring, out of touch government.

Mr ZAPPIA (Makin) (11:12): Once again, it is a pleasure to follow the member for Moreton in a debate in this chamber. In speaking on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017, can I say to the member for Moreton that I commend him on the speech he has just delivered. I believe he very eloquently outlined the issue in respect of pensioners, the treatment they have received under this government and the very stark difference between the Turnbull government and previous Labor governments.

Indeed, no government in recent times has treated pensioners more disgracefully than has the Turnbull-Abbott coalition government since their election in 2013. At that election they made a very clear promise: no cuts to pensions if they were to be elected. Sadly, immediately upon being elected, they did the opposite. Indeed, they not only set about cutting the pensions for pensioners but they also set about cutting a whole range of other payments and support measures that were in place that directly affected the income pensioners would have received or the support they were receiving.

Pensioners are people who, in many cases, already face considerable hardship. They have no other options in life with respect to raising funds. Many of them are at a stage in their life where they simply cannot do any part-time work if it were able. They simply have no alternative and no choice but to depend on the payments they receive through their pension. These are also people who lived in times that very likely meant they endured hardship and sacrifice to a level current generations simply would never understand—sacrifice and hardship I suspect many cabinet members of this Turnbull coalition government would not understand, because if they did they would not treat them so badly. This is a coalition government that thinks pensioners are easy targets and that perhaps they simply do not understand the impact and the effects of the changes they are making. The reality is that pensioners do understand. They know that they have been gutted and they know exactly when they are losing out as a result of government decisions. I hear it regularly from people I speak to in my electorate, as I am sure every member of this House—including coalition members—must hear as they are out and about speaking to people within their electorates. This legislation is an attempt by the Turnbull government to restore only a fraction of what has been taken from them over the last four years. Doing this will simply not restore the faith of pensioners in the Turnbull government. The Turnbull government is only doing it because it has been pressured into it by the public response, by this side of the parliament and by other MPs on the crossbench that have also been raising the unfairness of this government with respect to pensioners.

The legislation does two things: it restores the pensioner concession card, and it provides a one-off $75 payment to single pensioners with energy costs; for couples the payment is $62.50 each. Again, everyone would agree that this is a very meagre amount of money, and it is a one-off payment only. Simultaneously, this government wants to take $365 of ongoing annual payment that pensioners currently receive in the way of energy supplement. That payment will be taken away from new pensioners in the future and, I understand, for any pensioner that started receiving the pension after September 2016. My understanding is that legislation in respect of that was only brought into the House this morning. So again, I say to pensioners that have come on in the last 12 months, if you started receiving your pension in September 2016 expect that under this legislation you will lose the $365 energy supplement and in place you will get a one-off $75 amount.

Pensioners can do their sums, and they have. If you go through the measures that this government has brought into this place since coming into office, the attacks on pensioners have been relentless. Firstly, they brought in only at the beginning of this year changes to the pension asset test rules. As a result of those changes, 330,000 pensioners became worse off. 236,000 lost an average of $130 per fortnight and 91,000 lost their pension entirely. That was $190 per fortnight for them on average. For pensioners those amounts of money matter a lot. It makes a difference to the kind of life they can live.

The government did this in order to save $2.4 billion over four years. That is $2.4 billion that was taken out of the hands of pensioners in order for the government to try and balance its budget. Whichever way the government wants to spin the issue about the asset test rules, the reality is that that $2.4 billion came directly out of the household budgets of pensioners. The changes at the time also meant that those 91,000, which I now understand is 92,000, that lost their pension altogether in turn lost their pensioner concession card. So for them it was a double hit, because the pensioner concession card also enabled them to access a number of other things they needed in their lives at a reduced rate. So they were hit doubly. The government is now saying that they will restore that—only because, as I said earlier on, of the pressure that has been put on them.

Of course Labor will be supporting this legislation, because it does reinstate the pensioner concession card. Whilst the $75, or the $62.50 for each couple, is only a meagre amount, I have no doubt that it will still be money that the pensioners would rather have than not have.

I want to talk about the record of this government on pensioners. As I said from the outset, this government has treated the pensioners more disgracefully than any other government in recent times. The measures that this government has brought in, or tried to do, are beyond what I would have thought any fair-minded government would ever have wanted to do. Firstly, they tried to reset the deeming rate threshold, which would have affected the part pension of half a million pensioners across the country. Secondly, they wanted to change the indexation rate. These are matters that the member for Moreton covered in his speech a few minutes ago but I want to reiterate, because when you look at the list it really brings home how harsh this government has been when it comes to pensioners. Then there was the $1.3 billion of cuts to the pensioner concession payments that were being made to the states. The Turnbull and Abbott governments claimed that these were payments that were made by the states, and therefore, it was not a responsibility of the federal government. The reality is that that $1.3 billion had been paid by the Commonwealth government for years and years, and it went directly into the households of pensioners. The states might have picked up the tab, but this was a direct cut to pensioner payments by this government. We then had the asset test and taper rate, which I referred to earlier on, that took $2.4 billion from pensioners. We had the education supplement, where around 41,000 recipients would have been worse off as a result of what this government proposed to do. There is the issue of pensioners going overseas—if they were there for more than six weeks they would have had their pension also cut. If they were a migrant pensioner who did not spend their entire life in this country, the cuts would have been even deeper.

But those are not the only things that were going to hit pensioners. We also had the proposal, reaffirmed last week by the finance minister, that the pension age is going to rise to 70. This is not about cutting the pension or cutting the assistance and support payments to the pension—this is about cutting the whole thing. You do not get anything until you reach the age of 70—the highest age in the world for people to receive a pension, and this was the work of the coalition government.

It goes further than that, because when we look at other out-of-pocket costs that pensioners have to face on a daily basis, we then come to the issue of health funding in this country. We know that out-of-pocket health and medical costs have risen in recent years since this government came to office, particularly because the government has extended the Medicare rebate freeze. As a result of that, we know that more doctors are charging a co-payment or have increased their co-payment when they see a patient. That has a direct effect on pensioners because, as we also all know, pensioners, because of the stage in their life, are more likely to have to go and see their doctor and, therefore, incur medical costs. So the cuts to health payments by this government have also had a very direct impact on pensioners—more so than on any other sector in the community—and the government would have known that. Again, it just shows the callous disregard that this government has had for pensioners.

I now turn to aged-care funding—a sector of funding that, as we all know, pensioners are more likely to be in need of. Whether it is home and community care funding or whether it is the assistance and aged-care packages, it is more likely than not that the person applying for those packages or the home and community care assistance is going to be pensioner. Quite often it is a single pensioner; sometimes it is a pensioner where the spouse is in need of that support. Again, we see billions of dollars cut from those programs. As a result of those cuts, we also know that just getting an aged-care package at the moment is an absolute nightmare. Not only are the packages simply not available, particularly if you need a level 3 or level 4 package—even just getting the assessment has become very difficult. All of this is in order to stall the provision of the support that those packages would otherwise provide. This goes to the heart of the needs of pensioners. I can assure the House that I have had many people talk to me about that issue alone, and they are all pensioners. When they get to a point where they do not get the funding, what do they do? They have to find it one way or another, because it is funding that they absolutely need. They are in a desperate situation, and we have this government cutting their funding and simultaneously cutting the support to them in every other service that they might, in the past, have been receiving support from.

Whichever way pensioners turn, the Turnbull government's policies and budget cuts have made their lives more difficult. Pensioners know that, and that is why they have lost faith in the Turnbull government. Not only were they lied to by the coalition in the 2013 election, when they were promised no cuts to pensions; they feel even more cheated when they see $65 billion of tax cuts given to business whilst, simultaneously, they are asked to receive cuts to their weekly income.

I particularly focus on the cuts that go to those businesses which turnover more than $50 million per year, and which the government wants to proceed with in respect of the tax cuts that it wants to make for those businesses. Those cuts will amount to some $45 billion over the next decade. Most of that money will probably go to businesses that are based overseas or which have their headquarters overseas and, in fact, to many shareholders who are overseas, so it will not even be circulating in the Australian economy.

Contrast that with the money that is being cut to pensioners, which in my view is a false saving by the government. Pensioners, because of their meagre income every week, spend every last dollar in their local community. They keep people employed in the local community and they keep small businesses going in their local community. So most of the money that the government outlays to support pensioners inevitably would be coming back to local communities, supporting them, and through that much of the money would actually be coming back to government because it would save the government other expenditure down the track, whether that is increased unemployment payments that it would have to make or something similar.

I started off by talking about the very cruel cuts that are being made to pensioners by this government. These two measures, yes, will be supported by this side of the House. But both fall far short of restoring all of the cuts made by this government. I say to members opposite: pensioners do understand the way they are being treated by this government. They understand it well. I have spoken to them at forums, I have met with them in my office and I have met with them as I am out and around in the community. There is no sector in the community that feels more aggrieved and feels that they have been more harshly treated than do the pensioners I speak to. It is time that this government showed a little respect for them and treated them with the dignity they deserve.

Mr STEPHEN JONES (Whitlam) (11:26): I am pleased to speak on behalf of the 22,000 aged pensioners and around 7,000 people with disability in my electorate who receive a pension. They are deeply concerned about the government's flip-flopping on retirement income policy. Whether they are full- or part-pensioners, or whether they are superannuants, they are looking for certainty, and this Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017 provides none of it.

The bill has two schedules. We know that the first schedule is an afterthought and the second schedule is a complete backflip on everything the government has been doing for the last four years. Let's have a look at the first schedule.

We know that the schedule, which contains a one-off payment of $75 for age pensioners, is an absolute afterthought. It comes here not on its policy merits but as part of a deal which was put there to try to ease the $64 billion in big business tax cuts through the Senate. We know that they are deeply unpopular. We know that the Senate crossbenchers were not happy about them, because they are underfunded and unaffordable. So this was part of the deal to try to squeeze them through an otherwise reticent Senate.

The government hopes that this bill is going to distract pensioners from the cuts to energy supplements that it hopes to smuggle through in the shadow of this legislation, but we are not going to allow it and pensioners are not going to be so easily fooled. Here is why: in 2014 the coalition promised that it would reduce power prices. The only thing that stood between pensioners and lower electricity bills, according to the coalition, was the carbon price. We knew at the time that this was not true, but pensioners now know it is not true and everybody in fact now knows that it is not true, because energy prices have not dropped—they have gone through the roof. Whether it is gas or electricity prices, their mismanagement of the energy market has been an absolute disaster. It has seen prices go up and up and up, with no sign of abating.

When the carbon price was removed, the wholesale prices for electricity stood at about $65 or $67 per megawatt hour. Today, do you know what they are, Mr Deputy Speaker Goodenough? They are $134 per megawatt hour on average. That is the average national price. So, instead of going down, they have actually doubled. Against this backdrop you would think a government that was serious about looking after pensioners and people on fixed incomes would be doing something to ensure that we could help people who are struggling to pay their power bills. But instead of this we saw, this very morning, the minister come into this place and introduce legislation that is going to axe the energy supplement for 1.7 million Australians—a payment designed to help vulnerable Australians meet the cost of energy.

The bill—a $1 billion cut to new pensioners and people with disabilities, carers and people on Newstart—will see a single pensioner have their pension cut by $14.10 per fortnight, or $365 a year, a cut that was designed by this government and that is going to hurt pensioners. A pensioner couple will be $21.20 worse off a fortnight, or around $550 a year. Our friends in the coalition who have spoken in favour of this bill and will speak in favour of the pension cut bill are asking pensioners to form a line to pat them on the back and cheer for their $75 once-off payment at the same time as they are going to stick their hand in the air and vote for a $365 cut to pensions. It is an absolute disgrace, in the same week that they are claiming credit for a once-off payment of $75—this is less than $1.50 a week for pensioners—ripping away $365 for every new pensioner.

This is a government that as completely two-faced when it comes to pensions. But I can tell you, the people I represent in this place will be single-minded in their judgement of this government and its pensions policy. It is bad enough for the government to say to people who need help with rising energy costs that they are going to scrap the payments that were designed to assist them to meet those costs. It is bad enough that they are doing that, but it is made doubly worse by the fact that the government's own policies are responsible for sending energy prices through the roof.

A few weeks ago the Prime Minister promised that he was going to do something about gas prices, after sitting on his hands for over four years. They have suddenly twigged to the fact that we have a problem with the gas market in this country, which is seeing gas prices go through the roof for both manufacturers and households. The Prime Minister has promised that by July he is going to reduce the wholesale price for gas from $20 a gigajoule to bring us somewhere closer to the long-term average. Well, today industry passed a vote of no confidence in this prediction by the Prime Minister, in strongly worded statements by the manufacturers of this country, led by aluminium, but they are not alone. They have said that they have no faith in this government's ability to meet this objective. Neither do the pensioners, and neither does the Labor opposition, because we have seen them fail through their inattention and inactivity on gas prices, and we have seen them fail through their inactivity and their mismanagement of electricity policy. The lack of a long-term policy for our electricity markets and the ability to send long-term signals has led to an investment strike in new energy production, and it is this that is having a big impact on the high power prices that pensioners and other households are paying today.

The second schedule to this bill is an absolute backflip. In 2015 the former Treasurer announced in his budget changes to the income and assets test which would see a large number of pensioners removed from their pension. In an attempt to assuage the inevitable anger that those people who were being knocked off their part pension were going to feel towards the Treasurer, the Treasurer announced in his budget night speech that they would retain access to the pension concession card. We know that this was a lie. We know that this was not true. Labor have been relentless in pursuing the government to ensure that they stood true to the commitment that they gave to pensioners on budget night in 2015. Well, here we are, nearly two years later, and it has taken until now for the government to introduce this legislation, after being chased up hill and down dale by the Labor opposition and supported by those angry pensioners who have lost access and lost faith in this government. Only today have we seen the legislation introduced to the House to make good on a promise that was made two years ago by the former Treasurer. We welcome the fact that the government is finally doing the right thing, after exhausting every other option.

There are many in this place who value the important relationship that we have with our pensioners and superannuants. It is why the member for Cunningham and I, together with Labor's candidate for the seat of Gilmore, have organised over the last few months a series of pensioner forums. On 7 March in my electorate and in the electorate of Gilmore, we were very happy to host the member for Jagajaga—somebody who is respected across the aisle and around the country for her expertise and long-term commitment in this area. Over 600 pensioners and superannuants attended those forums. I can tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that is a large turnout in any electorate and in anyone's language. They were deeply concerned about the flip-flopping on policy by this government. They were deeply concerned to hear some straight information about what was going on and how they could get some certainty around pension policy in this country. Many issues were raised, such as what was happening with access to the concession card and what was happening to the energy supplements—matters that are the subject of legislation before the House today—but there were some other issues that they wanted answers on.

If you are a part-pensioner then you are acutely interested in the policy around deeming rates. If there is an issue on which the coalition government has been asleep at the wheel, it is deeming rates. There are many Australians who, if they have a mortgage, are enjoying historically low interest rates. We welcome the fact that this is assisting those people who are struggling to meet the cost of their mortgage to have more money in their pocket, because less money is going towards meeting their mortgage payments. But there is a flip side to this coin. If you are a pensioner or a superannuant who is relying on interest on your fixed capital to derive an income then the historically low rates of interest are hitting you hard and making it harder for you to earn the income necessary to meet your weekly expenses. Against this backdrop, you would expect a government that was in tune with the needs of superannuants to be focused on the deeming rates and ensuring that they were relevant with the current rates that were being earned within the investment market. Despite interest rates falling from 2.5 per cent in February 2015 to 1.5 per cent as of 7 March 2017, there has not been an adjustment in the deeming rates. Currently, a single pensioner's savings are deemed at 1.75 per cent on the first $49,200 and any amount over that rate is deemed at a rate of 3.25 per cent. The pensioners and the superannuants that I talk to say, 'If you can find a rate, if you can find a product, if you can find an investment that delivers on that, tell me about it, because there is nowhere in the market that we can get that rate.' There is a call to action for the government to do something about this, to provide some relief to pensioners, part-pensioners and superannuants, because they are struggling to make ends meet.

I have stood in this place before and asked the government to revisit its plan to lift the pension retirement age in this country to the highest level in the Western world. We thought that the deep concern within the community was going to have the government rethink its position on this, but we learnt only this week that the government is persisting with its plan to ensure that we lift the pension age to the highest level in the Western world.

Well, retiring at age 70 might be realistic if you have done office work or non-manual work for your entire life, but if you have worked with your body, if you have worked in physical labour, if you have worked as a builder, a carpenter, an electrician, a plumber or a labourer, or if you have worked as a nurse or a nurse's aide or a hospital orderly, and you have spent your entire life lifting weights, or being on your knees or working in confined spaces, or if you have worked as a truck driver and you have been responsible for lifting weights at awkward angles, you know that, by the time you are hitting your mid-60s, your back, your knees, your elbows and your skin are starting to give in. So only a person who has worked in an office all their life could say with any sincerity that you can work to the age of 70 and your body is going to hold up. People who have worked in physical labour their whole lives know that that is not true.

So again I call on the government to rethink this reckless policy, together with the other areas of their retirement, pension and income policy which are out of tune with the needs of people in my electorate and throughout the Illawarra, the Southern Highlands and the South Coast who are asking for a better deal from the government. They deserve better than the sleight of hand that they are getting through this legislation, this package of bills that is before the parliament today. The coalition have always thought that they could take this constituency for granted. That is no longer the case.

Ms O'TOOLE (Herbert) (11:42): I rise in this place to make it very clear that I am appalled at the way the Turnbull government is treating our pensioners and I am proud to support the amendment moved by Jenny Macklin MP. This government's continual attack on pensioners shows just how out of touch they really are with the basic needs of the people in our communities who need the most support.

It is also a pleasure for me to follow the member for Whitlam, who has identified very succinctly the plight of pensioners in our community today. The findings of the OECD report Pensions at a glance 2015 show that one-third of pensioners are living below the poverty line. Australia was ranked second-lowest on social equity, with 36 per cent of pensioners living below the poverty line, and, for Australia, this is simply disgraceful and totally unacceptable.

Not only is this government now making Australians work until they are 70 years of age, but it has put forward detrimental cuts to pensioners' livelihoods. This will see Australia have the oldest retirement age in the developed world. It is a sad fact that the Turnbull government will give big business a $65 billion tax break whilst making significant, life-altering cuts for pensioners. How out of touch is that!

The vast majority of the age pensioners in this country have worked and paid their taxes. They are not 'leaners'. They have earned their pension. They have contributed to our economy and our communities. In the Herbert electorate there are more than 12,000 people who are on the age pension. These pensioners are former teachers, construction workers, secretaries and nurses. These are the people who, during their lifetime, have contributed to the Herbert economy and community, and I intend to stand up for them against this government's cruel cuts.

But let us address the elephant in the room in this bill: the energy assistance payment. A single pensioner will have a pension cut of $14.10 per fortnight or $365 a year because of the Turnbull government. Couple pensioners will be $21.20 a fortnight worse off, or around $550 a year worse off. If someone, anyone, in the Turnbull government could please explain to me how taking $365 a year from a pensioner and replacing it with a measly one-off payment of $75 does not mean that pensioners will be worse off, I would be truly grateful. Taking $365 per year and giving a one-off payment of $75 simply does not add up and is not a win, in my book, for pensioners.

If this is the maths that our Treasurer is doing, it is no wonder that he has put our AAA credit rating at risk and trebled the deficit. A once-off $75 payment is not the same as $365 in assistance every year to help pensioners keep up with the increasing energy and cost-of-living outlays. A one-off $75 payment will never equal an annual $365 payment. This Prime Minister has shown time and time again that he does not even begin to get fairness. This government cannot try shaking your right hand whilst stealing from your left hand—that is just not fair. Yet this government talks about fairness every day. Clearly it just does not understand what the word 'fairness' means.

It is absolutely outrageous that this government is desperate to give big business a $65 billion tax cut but cannot even give our pensioners $365 a year to help cover the cost of electricity and the growing cost of living.

What is even worse is the fact that the Turnbull government is doing nothing to lower the cost of energy prices in the north. Under the Abbott and Turnbull governments, wholesale electricity prices have doubled across the National Electricity Market. The lack of a clear investment framework for industry to invest in new electricity generation is driving up power prices. The Australian Energy Council has stated that 'the lack of national policy certainty is now the single biggest driver of higher electricity prices'. So not only is the Turnbull government cutting vital assistance to pensioners to pay their electricity bills; it is also driving up the cost of electricity across the country by its inaction. Unfortunately in the Herbert electorate, inaction on electricity prices is nothing new, with this government not matching Labor's commitment of $200 million for a hydro power station on the Burdekin Falls Dam.

All of this inaction and cuts just leave our pensioners worse off every day. I challenge the government to meet some of the people they are affecting with these horrible cuts. Marie lives in my electorate of Herbert and is very active in her community. Marie is 70 years old and is still working. She currently works casually as a cook at one of the boarding schools in Townsville. Although Marie does receive the pension, she cannot afford to not work. Marie is forced to pinch pennies just to survive. She has also been a victim of the Centrelink robo-debt, even though her earnings were reported formally to Centrelink every pay day by the HR department in her place of work. Marie also works to help support her daughter, who is currently unemployed due to a workplace accident and is a single mother with a daughter with a disability. Pensioners like Marie will really miss the $365 energy supplement payment, and a one-off $75 payment just will not cut it.

Living in regional Queensland can be tough for pensioners who are trying to make ends meet. However, this government should never underestimate the determination and activism of seniors and pensioners. In my electorate of Herbert we have a flash mob called Seniors Creating Change, who are very innovative and active in educating the community and sending clear messages to this government. They use music and songs that they write to get their message out, and they are very popular performers in our community. On 10 June, Seniors Creating Change will celebrate their sixth birthday, and they are supported by the Townsville Community Legal Service.

Another issue for pensioners in our community is the price of fuel. It is much higher than the price of fuel in Brisbane. Our electricity costs are more than that of our southern counterparts, and some grocery items are much more expensive. Pensioners like Marie rely heavily on the support provided by the government, which is fair enough, as they have worked all of their lives—and in Marie's case, is still working—paid taxes and contributed to our communities. Surely in their ageing years they deserve to be able to live stress-free and not worry about having enough money to survive day to day and week to week. The energy supplement payment means a lot to pensioners like Marie. It allows them to take a breath and keep their head above water. It is a fair go, a hand up and not a handout. But the Turnbull government makes people like Marie feel ashamed to have something that should be rightfully theirs. Australian pensioners deserve better than this.

The Prime Minister cannot get away with this. He will not get away with pulling the wool over the eyes of age pensioners and hardworking Australians. The Prime Minister does not seem to care about our pensioners. If he really cared about fairness, he would support vulnerable Australians to make ends meet and he would not be trying to abolish the energy supplement payment. I am proud to stand with my Labor colleagues, and I would like to particularly mention the advocacy efforts of the honourable Jenny Macklin. Labor will once again oppose the government's attempts to remove the energy supplement payment for our pensioners, and Labor will once again take up the charge to fight for our pensioners.

Then we have the pensioner concession card. The coalition's disastrous handling of the pensioner concession card has effectively delivered a health cut for many pensioners. Joe Hockey, the then Treasurer, promised Australians that nobody would lose their concession entitlements. The reality is that people did. The coalition government misled the Australian people, and as a result many pensioners have gone without. He said that anyone who currently has a pensioner concession card would continue to receive a concession card that provides the same benefits. Instead, former pensioners were issued with health care cards and Commonwealth seniors cards, which did not provide the same benefits. Many pensioners without a pensioner concession card were not able to access vital government-funded hearing services, and from state to state different concessions were applied. The loss of the pensioner concession card was a cruel double blow to many former pensioners with modest incomes. After Labor had to drag this government kicking and screaming, and after Australian pensioners had to fight for something that was rightfully theirs, the Turnbull government have heard our call and are finally attempting to right the wrong they created.

However, the damage is done. Pensioners can see through this cellophane Turnbull government and know that this government cannot be trusted to protect their pensions. This government must think that Australians have a very short and poor memory. We remember 2014, when this government tried to cut pension indexation and leave pensioners $80 dollars a week poorer over 10 years. We remember when the Liberals tried to reset the deeming rate thresholds, changes that would have negatively impacted half a million part pensioners. Who could forget when the assets test changed and the goalposts were shifted on hundreds of thousands of pensioners who had carefully planned for their retirement. Almost 100,000 retirees lost their pension and many more had their payments reduced. Heaven forbid that a retiree would dare aspire to travel overseas—if Malcolm Turnbull had his way, after six weeks overseas pensioners' payments would be cut off. It would be even worse for migrant pensioners. If you are a pensioner who was not born in Australia and you wanted to visit family and friends overseas, your pension would be reduced in line with the time you have lived in Australia, as though your contribution was simply worthless.

They say these cuts have gone for good, but, as usual, pensioners cannot trust this government. The Prime Minister, the Treasurer, the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Social Services have all said that the only reason these cuts are not in the budget is because they cannot get through the Senate. This government still believes that making life harder for hardworking Australians is fair and reasonable. These cuts are not gone. The Prime Minister is just waiting for an opportunity to resurrect them. In 2013, Tony Abbott promised no changes to the pension. They could not be trusted then and they cannot be trusted now.

The Prime Minister is holding onto the member for Warringah's plan to increase the pension age to 70. Australians will have to work longer than anybody else anywhere in the world, as I have said. That is not a dream—that is called a nightmare. The Turnbull government is weak when it comes to delivering for our pensioners. The Hon. Christian Porter should be ashamed. As elected representatives, we should be looking after all Australians and not just those with big pockets and big bank accounts. Big business does not need our help. Our pensioners have paid more tax than a lot of tax dodging big businesses. Pensioners deserve and need our help. I will continue to stand up for those who cannot advocate for themselves and I will fight to ensure that pensioners get a fair go, because that is the Australian way.

Dr MIKE KELLY (Eden-Monaro) (11:54): I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017. I would like to reflect on quite an amazing history. We talked the other night about the education policy of the present government and the Orwellian nightmare we have been traversing. The issue of pensions is one that also illustrates that incredible story. Really, I think that nothing illustrates more the government's unfairness in its approach to budget measures than the history we have seen in relation to pensions.

Again, if we hark back to those promises that were made before the 2013 election, they were that there would be no changes to pensions, let alone cuts—no changes whatsoever. Then what we saw in that 2014 budget was an incredibly brutal attack on those pensions. I think the area of those pension cuts that concerned me the most related to, in particular, the attempts to cut veterans' pensions and support for war widows and for war orphans. Of course, this was following the Labor record in government of actually taking pensions to historic levels—historic improvements—and introducing new measures to better reflect the support that pensioners of all kinds needed. In particular, there was the introduction of one new indexation mechanism known as the pensioners and beneficiaries cost of living index. We know that CPI did not necessarily reflect the true costs of living. You cannot eat a plasma television even if the price of those TVs come down. That is not something that is relevant to the day-to-day survival of a pensioner.

And so this PBCLI was a very important mechanism to reflect the true cost of living for a pensioner. What does it cost to actually put food on the table or to use electricity, petrol and other basic services and charges? The stripping away of all those efforts by Labor really set back the cause of providing for citizens in the context of a period of time where we had seen the cost of living become a major problem for low- and middle-income earners and pensioners in Australia. It effectively doubled. We saw articles in the media today reflecting on the doubling of cost-of-living issues and the essential elements for maintaining life.

This 2014 attempt to wind back these pensions, in particular in the veterans' area, caused a storm of protest in the veterans' community, as it rightly should. One article at the time in relation to those cost-cutting exercises was very illustrative of this. It was an article by Heath Aston in April 2015, as the full impact of these cuts were starting to be felt. Of course, the Abbott government was refusing to release documents which fully explained and elucidated on these things, but we knew that those changes were going to affect something like 300,000 military veterans and their spouses.

The decision in the budget papers at that time was forecast to cut $65.1 million from veterans and widows when it was to take effect in 2017, and those effects were to compound year-on-year. The government at that time also announced that it was scrapping the $800-a-year seniors supplement that Labor created and which was accessed by an estimated 29,000 veterans and their families. It was to help pay for energy, telephone and internet bills, council rates and the like.

One particularly bitter veteran, Bob Whinnen, a South Australian truck driver who fought in Vietnam, said that conscripts like him were never able to fulfil their full potential in civilian life. His quote in that article was:

We were conscripted by a Liberal-National Coalition government and they sent us there grossly ill-equipped with World War II arms. The North Vietnamese were cutting the grass with their machine guns. Now another Coalition government does this to us.

So there was a great deal of resentment and disgust at what was happening to our war widows, war orphans and veterans at that time. The Defence Force Welfare Association and the ADSO really importuned the then Prime Minister, Mr Abbott, to have a closer look at what he was doing there and to realise the folly of his ways.

I am proud of the effort that the Labor Party and the crossbenchers put in to defeat the worst aspects of what was being attempted then. Of course, that then folded over into defending Defence Force wages. At the same time as we saw that happen in the 2014 budget, later the Defence Force Remuneration Tribunal effectively attempted to cut Defence Force pay and conditions. That was received with equal horror. Again, that battle was entered into by Labor and crossbenchers and we were able to achieve some relenting of that vicious attack. But we still did not achieve Labor's three per cent wage rises for Defence Force personnel.

That was a shocking situation and now, again, we are now seeing in this attempt to wind back the support for the energy supplement for our seniors a repetition of that, because it will apply across the board to all these pension and support recipients.

What a cynical move it is to say they are going to give them $75 in 'go-away money' in exchange for the $375 a year that they were going to get. What we see in that is a classic illustration of how this government has approached its time—the policy confusion over these last four years. Effectively, they begin by taking four wheels off your car and then give you one back and then ask you to congratulate them and tell them what a great job they have done. We are seeing that in the schools debate—they rip all that money out and then try and put some back in and say it is all good. We have seen that in so many policy areas this government has pursued. Really, the public are not going to cop this kind of con anymore. In this respect, it is an insult to say they will give $75 and that is it. It is a recognition that the cost-of-living pressures are real, that these energy cost increases are real, but at the same time it is saying that is all you get and you will have to make that $75 stretch for the rest of your life.

That brings us back to the government's heinous attempt to blame the carbon tax and renewable energy for these cost-of-living increases in the energy sector. You will recall that the so-called carbon tax was the source of all evil for costs on pensioners and low- and middle-income earners. That denied the truth of the situation at the time, which was that, firstly, Labor introduced a support mechanism that completely dealt with any impacts arising out of the introduction of our carbon pricing scheme. The truth of that situation—and it is the truth now—is that the increase in electricity costs is being generated by so many other aspects. In particular, there was a wide-ranging upgrade of the poles and wires in New South Wales. Massive cost increases were introduced into the system through that process.

Privatisation was also a factor in that. Sharon Beder, from the University of Wollongong, in a paper that she wrote in 2013, concluded:

The real cause of electricity price increases in eastern Australia have been: firstly the introduction of a national electricity market and the consequent price manipulation by electricity generators; secondly the shifting of risk arising from market price volatility from electricity retailers to ratepayers; and finally, the introduction of a pricing formula for electricity distribution companies which replaces investment decisions based on need and forward planning with those based on maximising rate of return. Further privatisation or deregulation is therefore a solution likely to exacerbate the problem rather solve it.

These are the sorts of things that my friends in the Electrical Trades Union and others have warned about. There will be issues for national security, the cost of electricity down the track and the reliability of the service provided. And boy, haven't we seen that played out! All of the reports that have been done since the Prime Minister's attempts to blame it on renewable energy or the heat in South Australia have been shown to be complete fallacy. Effectively, if it had not been for the investment that we saw in renewable energy, there would have been much greater impact on consumer prices because of the system capacity that is disappearing as our fossil fuel generated energy sources decline. The simple commercial reality is that no-one is going to invest in new coal-fired power generation. The decision to shut Hazlewood was a commercial decision made by companies in France and Japan based on a simple commercial analysis. If you were going to build new coal-fired power stations now, that would simply add even more to the consumer cost impact of electricity prices.

At the same time, we know that investment in renewables is an investment in long-term cheaper electricity. You can see the logic of that. For coal-fired power, you have to have a huge open-cut or subsurface coalmine and there is the effort to extract the coal, and then it has to be transported to a massive coal-fired power station, the coal has to be burnt to produce steam and then the electricity has to be generated. If you put up a wind turbine, it takes advantage of a free resource—the wind that is blowing—and a solar farm takes advantage of the free resource of the sun. When you achieve the strategic weight of that renewable energy investment, that renewable energy sector, you will see that there will over time be a significant reduction in cost provided it is all put in the context of a well-managed transition plan and a plan to manage the grid.

The most heinous impact of the failure of government policy in this area is that that transition and that management of the grid has just not happened. In the context of what is a national situation and a national energy electricity market, it was the federal government's responsibility to put in place a plan to take charge of the transition and the management of the grid. We have seen nothing happen in four years, and as a consequence the current situation has unfolded and we see impacts on consumer prices as a result. In countries where they have got this right—Denmark, for example—they are already withdrawing subsidies from the renewable energy sector because it is now well and truly standing on its own two feet and undercutting fossil fuel sources.

We have also seen in our country, apart from the gaming of the system by private operators, the impact of gas policy. The government has failed to adopt national interest tests up until now in relation to gas, and that has created a massive problem. Without moving rapidly to even greater sources of renewable energy, energy markets have to fall back on gas as the transition fuel, as the mechanism with which to manage peaks. The situation that has evolved in relation to gas exports has had a massive impact on the domestic price of gas. The interests of ordinary Australians have been sold out by governments that have been prepared in this country at state and federal levels to sacrifice consumers' interests for the export buck when at the same time in those early days we seemed to be getting nothing back from exports because of the concessions that were made to them.

Obviously a number of factors have caused these price increases, but what we know is that they are going to continue in the short term. There have been forecasts of price rises increasing by another 40 per cent or so in time to come. The government have completely disregarded all the best advice that could be offered to them on how to achieve efficiency in the energy market—advice from, initially, Mr Shergold, the Productivity Commission, the OECD and the IMF. They did not follow the example of Conservative colleagues in the UK, Germany and New Zealand, and they were not prepared to get involved in energy markets with China, Japan, South Korea, California, Canada, Europe et cetera. We are going to see price rises because they are ignoring the advice of all of these bodies, including the Young Nationals, the National Farmers Federation, all of business, the energy market operators and even their own Chief Scientist, Dr Finkel—a scientist they appointed, who has said time and time again that an emissions intensity scheme not only is going to be the way to achieve our outcomes here but also will reduce the impact for consumers, and it is the most cost-effective way to do that and to transition effectively to a decarbonised energy generation sector. It is time the government woke up to that and did not make pensioners pay the price for their bad policy

Mr HAYES (Fowler—Chief Opposition Whip) (12:09): I also seek to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017. The bill has two purposes: firstly, in providing a one-off energy assistance payment, which will apply to nearly four million pensioners; secondly, in reinstating the pensioner concession card, which I understand will be provided to some 92,000 people who, since 1 January this year, have no longer been eligible for the pensioner concession card due to the changing of the assets test. Let there be no doubt that we will support this bill because we are committed to supporting the most vulnerable and most disadvantaged in the community. That is not exactly why the government is doing this, by the way, but I will come to that.

Labor will always move to hold the government to account. We will not let the government get away with the savage and unfair cuts to Australian pensioners. We will not let the government fool everyday Australians into thinking that they care about pensioners. History has shown us differently. Time and time again, we have seen what the Liberals do in terms of the notion of fairness. The fairness certainly does not ring true in this current budget. If you go back into the last four budgets, you can also see that one constant theme was they could retrieve money from some of the most vulnerable in our community. Some of the most vulnerable people are our age pensioners who rely on disability support.

The past four budgets of the Abbott-Turnbull government have certainly been a classic example of that. Many of the measures did not get through the Senate, but they were still there. They were referred to as the 'zombie measures'. Bear in mind that in 2013 when the member for Warringah, Tony Abbott, was leader of the coalition, he went to the election promising that there would be no changes that would impact on pensioners. In their very first budget after they formed government, the 2014 budget had limitations put on the indexation that would be applied to pensions. They moved straightaway to impact the cuts on pensioners. They moved straightaway to take the energy supplement off pensioners and people that were living on disability support pensions and people on Newstart.

Simply because this bill comes to us today and says that there is some additional money being put out to pensioners, it does not mean that they have changed their spots on this. They have not changed at all when it comes to addressing the issue of fairness and decency for some of those who are the most vulnerable people in our community. Bear in mind, this government, as it stands now, is wedded to a retirement age of 70 before people can receive the old age pension. That, by the way, will be the oldest retirement age in the developed world for receiving a state-funded pension for retirement.

I would like to think that members opposite might reflect on this a little. I know many of them are a lot younger than 70 years of age, but, perhaps, some of them speak to their parents. Do they really think that they can expect people to work—and some of those people are going to be without assets and are going to be working in construction and other labouring-based industries—until they are 70 before they can attract a pension? I know that the people I used to represent before coming into parliament, the police officers of the country, have all assured me that they would not want to be out on trucks wrestling drunks and out at pubs, and things like that, at 70 years of age. These people opposite just do not get that. There has to be fairness and decency in the way that we treat people in our community. Simply trying to jack up retirement age is not one of the ways to do that, particularly when they have a view that, whilst they cannot find money to treat pensioners fairly and they cannot find the money to support the indexation of pensions, they can find $65 billion for tax cuts to big business—many of which will be multinationals, so the profits will go offshore. They can do that okay but fail to actually look after the vulnerable in our community. We on this side of the House will never walk away from people who do not have a large voice or footprint in terms of what they can and cannot demand. We will always speak up for them. We will be the ones always fighting to make sure that they get a fair deal.

In schedule 1 of the bill the government are offering a one-off energy assistance to pensioners of $75. About four million pensioners that will get that. But do not forget that the government also have a plan to actually take away from pensioners the energy assistance supplement of $365 that applies each year. These pensioners are already receiving that. That is going to be taken away and they are going to be given $75. As the member for Eden-Monaro said, it is like having someone take four tyres off your car and then give one back and expect to get a pat on the back for being generous. The government are physically taking that money away and simply saying, 'Because we're going to give them $75 that should make a difference.'

Bear in mind that this is an energy assistance payment. It has been very quiet from many of those who ranted and raved on that side of the House in the last term of the government about energy prices going up. I cannot speak for everyone, but I know in New South Wales energy prices just about doubled. The fact that they have doubled means that everyone is having to dig a bit deeper to pay for their energy costs. But people that are pensioners cannot decide to just go and work another shift, get some overtime or take on a casual job to make up the difference. People who are on an age pension do not get those opportunities. The energy supplement of $365 a year was there to help make up that difference, and that is now being taken away. As I said, we will not oppose the bill because it is going to put money out there—the $75 payment—but we will certainly move to resist those other aspects trying to restrict the ongoing energy supplement of $365 a year being paid to pensioners in this country.

Often I wonder about the government and the way they reflect on some of the most vulnerable in the community. To be quite honest about it, it is not that the pensioners are all going to get together and outvote them; pensioners probably do not have that sort of political power. It is not that they are going to have placards in front of the member for Wentworth's office, because that is probably not what pensioners do. People who have made a lifetime of contribution to this country are entitled to be treated fairly and decently. We only have to look back to 2013, when those who formed this government said there would be no change to issues such as pensions, education and health. Just look to see what they have done in their time in government. They have moved on each and every one of those areas. They have moved to make those changes. They have moved to make cuts and to make it more difficult for the vulnerable in our community to live.

The other aspect of this bill seeks to perform a well overdue backflip. It is going to actually return the pensioner concession card to people who did have it but, due to a change to the asset test, became ineligible for that pensioner concession card on 1 January this year. It is a much overdue backflip. It is trying to right a wrong they created. This is another broken promise by this government. The former Treasurer, Joe Hockey, who was the member for North Sydney, when he stood up and spoke in this parliament made it very clear:

… anyone who currently has a Pensioner Concession Card will continue to receive a concession card that provides the same benefits …

Clearly that just did not happen, because it is changed, so we have this backflip occurring now. They are trying to, again, say that they are being magnanimous to the pensioners out there, that they are doing something for them. What they are not saying is that they are correcting something that they created, and that is the asset test that made these people ineligible to hold the card they once held.

There is the temptation to come into the parliament and talk just about the theory of these things. But those of us who actually get out and among the community, who actually talk to real people, really start to see how it impacts. One of my constituents visited my office about this. Marian Parkin came to see me about what this would mean to her. She is one of those 92,000 people who lost their pensioner concession card. As she said, she and her husband relied on the card heavily. It got them through the hardships of daily life. For example, she indicated to me that prior to losing the pensioner card she would receive water bills of about $88 a year in Sydney. I suppose for a pensioner that is about average. But now those water bills, without any increase in her and her husband's use of water, are just a little under $300 a year. So, her position is being further impacted. It certainly does not help when the government takes away these concessions and then expects people who have no ability to raise additional income, other than borrowing from family members, to just meet the rising costs of living.

This may not mean much to those sitting opposite, but elderly Australians deserve to see that they will be treated with fairness and decency, whichever government is in power. Part of the reason for pulling this back in the first place was to make good on a promise to give a $65 billion tax cut. That certainly does not go down well with pensioners, the people who are on fixed incomes or the working families out there. People think that first and foremost we look after our own. We know that a majority of the tax cut is going to multinational companies and will find its way overseas. I think countries like Australia are in a very good place. We know that countries like Australia are sought-after investment destinations. Yet we are depriving our own. We cannot find the money to look after schools. We cannot find the money to keep our health system free of Medicare cuts. And we cannot find the money to treat pensioners with fairness and decency. But we can, as of 1 July this year, ensure that anyone who is earning $1 million a year will get a tax cut in the vicinity of $16½ thousand—while everyone else, by the way, will have a tax increase, and the government will pursue its endeavour of giving big business a tax cut of $65 billion.

This is a government that has misled vulnerable Australians from time to time. Right from the election in 2013, this government has promised that there will be no changes to the pension. But, despite the promise, after six months of being in government, it moved to cut pensions as quickly as it could. It falls to us to actually stand up for those who do not have a strong voice in our community. (Time expired)

Mr HOWARTH (Petrie) (12:24): I am proud to be part of a government that values the contributions of senior Australians to our country. There is no doubt that we live in the best country in the world. It is a fantastic country. People from all over the world want to come and live here. Part of that is what senior Australians have left us. For many generations before us and the current generation of seniors who are self-funded retirees and pensioners, their work, their contribution through volunteering and their involvement in the community have made Australia the great country that it is. The Turnbull government recognises that, and I am proud to be part of a government that does.

I am also be proud to be part of a government that backs the families of those seniors. The government recognises and is working to make sure that they get the most out of every dollar that they earn. I am proud to be part of a government that supports the vulnerable and casts a secure net under Australians who find themselves falling on hard times. I am proud to be part of a government that has enormous respect for our veterans, those who have been prepared to pay with their lives so that we all may be free.

I am particularly proud to be able to rise to speak today on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017. That is because the bill provides a one-off energy assistance payment to recipients of the age pension, the disability support pension, the parenting payment single and certain veterans' payments. Approximately 3.8 million people will benefit, which is great news. In addition to providing energy assistance payments, the bill will provide a pensioner concession card to former social security pensioners and receivers of veterans' payments cancelled with the rebalancing of the pension assets test by Social Services Legislation Amendment Act 2015. This is important because the coalition has been listening to people in their electorates, and that is why this card is being restored. As a result of losing their concession card, former pensioners also lost access to hearing services from the Department of Health as well as access to some state and local government and private enterprise concessions outside the Commonwealth jurisdiction. It could have been Brisbane City Council rates or Moreton Bay Regional Council rates, or it might have been car registration. So this change to restore the card and this one-off energy supplement are very important. I am proud to say that we are listening to the people in our electorates, as is the minister, and I very much support this bill.

But I have to say that this amendment from Labor is a bit rich, particularly coming from the member for Jagajaga. Australians know that Labor cannot be trusted with energy prices. Labor cannot be trusted when it comes to balancing the budget, and they flip-flop on all sorts of different issues, which I would just like to highlight.

We will hear the member for Jagajaga come in and sum up in a minute and talk about how terrible we are, but you know what? The people in my electorate know that the member for Jagajaga brought in the world's largest carbon tax, which I was elected under in 2013 and we said we would scrap. They also know that the members for Moreton, Whitlam, Eden-Monaro and Fowler also voted for that carbon tax. They all voted for it, every one of them sitting over there that get up and speak on this bill. The words that come out of their mouths in relation to energy prices are absolutely hypocritical. They brought in the biggest carbon tax on the back of their Prime Minister Gillard at the time saying, 'There will be no carbon tax under any government that I lead.'

Do you think Australians have forgotten that? I do not think so. Not in my electorate, because every pensioner that went down to the RSL for a meal got hit with the carbon tax. Refrigeration prices, gas prices, all of this that the poor old RSL had to pay, and at the local pub where they went for a counter meal, the pensioners got hit with, and hit with hard. They were hit really hard. I remember the Bracken Ridge Tavern in my electorate in 2013 telling me that they had a bloody carbon tax bill—excuse me, Mr Deputy Speaker, I withdraw that comment—of $120,000 a year. And do you think that is not passed on to pensioners when they go down to eat? They want to talk about a supplement, a lousy 365 bucks a year that they gave, because people's electricity bills went up by 50 per cent. So their home electricity bill went through the roof, they got hit with it down at the local pub as well, or the RSL, for a counter meal. And, somehow, they are sticking up for pensioners? Australians have not forgotten. We will keep reminding them, no doubt about that.

We also have Labor's ridiculous renewable energy policy of 50 per cent by 2030, where we are seeing a rush to renewables. It is so much so that in states like South Australia they are having problems with supply. If you get onto the NEM—the National Electricity Market—you will see that often South Australia is paying a lot more than other states, like Queensland, when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. Once again, that is a Labor policy. And it is not only federal Labor policy. The Palaszczuk government in Queensland, as you know, Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta, has the same policy. It is going to see energy costs skyrocket even more.

So we will not take lectures from those opposite and the member for Jagajaga when it comes to electricity prices. The Labor Party flip-flops on so many different items, including under the leadership of Bill Shorten. That man cannot be trusted with the prime ministership of this country. When you look at what he says in relation to the NDIS, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which needs to be properly funded, one minute he thinks it is great to raise the Medicare levy and then he says he is going to vote against it! Now he says he is going to vote against it!

Mrs Sudmalis: Shame!

Mr HOWARTH: The member for Gilmore is right when she says, 'Shame!' I agree with her. One minute they are saying that needs based school funding is important and that they give a Gonski and everything, and then when Mr Gonski himself comes out with the Prime Minister and Minister Birmingham in relation to $18 billion worth of increases for schools, what do Labor do? They vote against it, because they said that it is not enough.

They cannot fund a single thing. Everyone knows that the Labor Party cannot balance the budget. The young people up in the gallery know that. That is the reason why this young generation is going to be stuck with higher taxes for generations to come, because that mob over there racked up deficits after Kevin Rudd got in and said that he was an economic conservative. My 15-year-old son could spend more than what he earns, if he were able to. It does not take a genius to come into this place and say: 'I'm going to spend more than what I have: There's a GFC—quick, that's a good excuse to rack it up. Let's rack it up. Let's give away school halls, let's give away pink batts and let's give away all the other stuff. And, while we're at it, let's whack a carbon tax on to keep the votes for the Greens on side. That's going to push up energy bills for pensioners.'

This is the modern-day Labor Party. One minute we get the member for Lilley, as Treasurer, saying that he was going to fight tooth and nail for company tax reductions. That is what he said, and the Leader of the Opposition said the same thing, 'Were going to fight for this; it's going to be great for jobs and great for small business.' Now, it is a $65 billion tax cut. So I ask the young people in the gallery and those people reading this speech at home that when we talk about company tax reductions, do you think that the government just likes to give away tax? Do you think that somehow we like to come in here and say, 'Here you go, let's hand over a bit of extra tax.' I do not think so. There is a reason for it. It supports our plan for jobs and growth, a plan that those people over there do not have. They have no plan for jobs and growth.

We have a plan that will help young people to secure a job well into the future. But I will not go off on that. I am just highlighting to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and to the people in my constituency, the hypocrisy of Labor and their flip-flopping on all sorts of issues. This includes more affordable child care. We all know that parents who are wanting to get back to work are getting hit with big excesses in child care after nine months. Those over the voted against it.

And there is balancing the budget. Please, as I said before, we know that every time they run a deficit. Last time, not only did they rack up billions of dollars' worth of debt—what if our senators had not been in the Senate to make savings?—but they went into the 2016 election promising an extra $16 billion in debt, and the member for McMahon said that somehow they were going to magically balance the budget at the same time. They were going to rack up $16 billion in debt that every single person in the public gallery would have to pay for through higher taxes because of accumulating debt each year. Every single person would pay for that and every business would get hit with it. And then, when you went to buy something at a business, whether it was a bed from Harvey Norman, a counter meal at the local pub or a holiday, you would get hit with increased cost. You would get hit with increased cost, because the Labor Party thinks that businesses are cash cows. The reason we support lowering company tax is that we want to be competitive worldwide, and we know that, as the member for Lilley said—and he fought tooth and nail for it when he was Treasurer—it helps jobs.

I want to thank the crossbenchers for voting to support small business and medium businesses up to $50 million and giving them a company tax reduction. I will not thank the member opposite who was once the small business minister in 2013. He came up to my electorate in 2013 and spoke at the chamber of commerce and spoke about how good they were for small business! Give me a break, please! He upped the carbon tax.

But let me get on to state Labor. Let me get on to the Palaszczuk government, because probably everyone who is my age or above in Queensland will remember the blackouts we had in 2004. Basically, in Queensland, ever since Joh left, back in '87, we had not had any investment in our electricity system by Labor premiers. Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta, you would remember that, in 2004, we had a lot of blackouts.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Vasta ): Order! Member for Petrie, please sit down. The honourable member for Fenner?

Dr Leigh: Mr Deputy Speaker, I am usually loathe to interrupt my colleagues in full flight, but when they talk about the history of the Bjelke-Petersen state government, it might be the moment to draw them back to the subject of the bill.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I thank the honourable member for Fenner and I—

Mr HOWARTH: Thank you, but I will note, for the member for Fenner, that there had been no investment in electricity by state Labor since the National Party left in 1987.

Dr Leigh: What has that got to do with the social services bill?

Mr HOWARTH: Because it is about energy pricing, mate. Wake up and listen and stop jumping in at the end of the conversation.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: It is a wide-ranging debate, Member for Fenner. It is a wide-ranging debate.

Mr HOWARTH: You are happy for energy pricing to go up for pensioners, right? You are happy for energy prices to go up. But state Labor borrowed billions of dollars. If there are any Queenslanders here, do you know what they are doing now? Do you know what the Palaszczuk government are doing? They owe $80 billion in Queensland, and they are getting billions of that money and they are putting it on to Energy Queensland, which is a merger of Energex and Ergon; they are putting it onto CS Energy, which is a generator in Queensland, and Stanwell, which is a generator—all state-government-owned assets—and they are saying, 'We don't owe any money. The Queensland government doesn't owe any money. That belongs to the energy generators and distributors.' And this mob here wonder why energy prices are going up! We have just had state Labor, the Palaszczuk government, offload some $10 billion worth of their debt onto their own energy providers. They moved billions of dollars. They also gold-plated poles and wires.

So the Australian public know that these two members over here—I cannot blame the guy from Tassie up the back; he has only just come in—along with everyone else, voted for the carbon tax. And now they come in here and try to tell us that we are not doing enough to help pensioners with energy pricing.

I would like to quote the minister here. He said this morning:

The government will continue to prioritise energy security and affordability. The 2017-18 budget includes a $265 million energy package that will ensure Australia maintains a secure, reliable and competitive energy system into the future. Amongst a range of measures, it provides funding to expand gas supply, makes finance available to build a solar thermal plant and provides additional funding for the Australian Energy Regulator to scrutinise energy providers to ensure they are serving consumers' needs.

He also spoke about Prime Minister Turnbull's plan for Snowy 2.0, which is a great plan that he is acting on, that he is implementing, that he has made a decision on, to help with our energy supply, which is very, very important. The minister also spoke about gas-fired generation, saying how it is an important part of our electricity system and saying that the higher the price of gas the higher the price of electricity, and calling on the state governments, particularly Victoria's, to lift the moratoriums to allow for more supply of gas, so that pensioners are not getting hit with higher gas prices.

The Australian public are awake up to Labor; they are right onto them. They know that Labor cannot balance the budget and that, every time they cannot, that pushes up the cost for people. They know that Labor cannot be trusted but the coalition can.

Mr PORTER (Pearce—Minister for Social Services) (12:39): I thank all of the members for their contributions, particularly the member who has just spoken for his excellent contribution to the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017. Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta, as you are aware, the bill provides for a one-off energy assistance payment to welfare recipients who have a limited ability to earn additional income, and the bill reinstates the pensioner concession card to more than 92,000 former pensioners who ceased being eligible for a pension on 1 January 2017 due to the rebalancing of the pension assets test. So the bill provides for a one-off energy assistance payment to recipients of the age pension, disability support pension, parenting payment single, and veterans and their partners paid the service pension, the income support supplement or relevant compensation payments who are eligible for payment and residing in Australia on 20 June 2017, the test date. This payment is to assist them with their energy costs. The energy assistance payment will be $75 for singles and $62.50 for each member of a couple and will provide additional assistance to individuals, totalling 3.8 million Australians.

The bill will also reinstate the pensioner concession card to about 92,300 former pension recipients. These former pensioners lost their entitlement to the pensioner concession card when they ceased being eligible for the pension on 1 January 2017 due to the rebalancing of the pension assets test. They will once again be eligible for the card. To maintain their current benefits, those former pensioners issued with a Commonwealth seniors health card will also retain that card. As the pensioner concession card provides all the benefits of the healthcare card, the healthcare card will become redundant and will be deactivated for those former pensioners issued with a healthcare card on 1 January 2017 due to the rebalancing of the pension assets test.

I might note here in closing that, in response to the amendment to this bill moved by the member for Jagajaga, it will probably not come as a surprise to members opposite that I can confirm the government will not be supporting that amendment. I would also note that that amendment is in effect something of a protest. Despite the protests of members opposite, when they delivered their election costings to the Australian people at the last election, the absolute fact is that they failed to reverse and thereby adopted the exact measures that they now continually protest. So we can be absolutely clear as a matter of fact that Labor adopted the rebalancing of the pension assets test. They adopted the measure, they took the savings and they spent the savings. We can confirm, to be absolutely clear, that Labor adopted changes to the schoolkids bonus. They took those savings, they banked those savings and they spent those saving. We can also be absolutely clear that, at the 2016 election—in the election policy that they took to the Australian people and that the Australian people took in good faith—they adopted ending the carbon tax compensation for new entrants to the welfare system—that is, they adopted our position, which is to end compensation for a tax that no longer exists.

It does take, I think, a very thorough-going devotion to fantasy when you can both oppose and support a measure all at the same time—but that is a devotion to fantasy that is being repeated with great regularity. Members opposite with respect to the NDIS funding gap claim to be able to spend savings three times. For years members opposite have said that they want simpler, more affordable child care, and then they voted against it. For years members opposite have said that they support needs based school funding, but now they intend to vote against it. For years they have said that they fully support the NDIS, but now they oppose the very mechanism that they have always suggested is the fairest way to fully fund the NDIS. So I would encourage those opposite to be, at the very least, up-front, genuine and transparent with the Australian people. It is an untenable position to take to an election, a full general election, the adoption of a savings measure and then continually try and convince the Australian people that you are in actual fact opposing it.

Where measures have been supported at an election they should be supported when the government moves those measures in parliament. These measures are designed to improve the sustainability of the welfare system, which is no doubt why they were agreed to by members opposite at the 2016 election. The coalition says what it will do. We are transparent. We are open. We take challenging and difficult decisions in the broader interests of the Australian people, and it is these decisions that are allowing us to plot a real and consistent path back to surplus. In closing, the bill acts on the government's commitments outlined in the 2017-18 budget. I commend the bill to the House.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Vasta ): The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Jagajaga has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The immediate question is that the amendment be agreed to.

Question negatived.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question now is that the bill be now read a second time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.

Mr PORTER (Pearce—Minister for Social Services) (12:45): by leave—I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Dr LEIGH (Fenner) (12:46): In 1936, John Maynard Keynes published The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, and one of the key insights of that book was to draw a distinction between the short run and the long run. In the short run, Keynes pointed out that it was important to have policies that would get the economy out of a temporary slump, such as that the world was in the mid-1930s. It could either be monetary policy or fiscal policy, but where it was fiscal policy he urged that it might be important to put in place temporary measures that encouraged businesses to invest over the short term to get the economy out of a hole. Keynes distinguished this from measures that might be put in place to boost long-run aggregate demand. Those measures would seek to be stable and predictable; they would not have sudden death thresholds.

Today, the House is facing a measure which, frankly, would be better crafted to get the economy out of a temporary slump than to feed long-term demand. In its policy on accelerated depreciation, the government has chopped and changed over the years. In office, Labor put in place a higher level of instant write-off, increasing the threshold from $1,000 to $6,500—a stable and sustainable level which we felt would do a great deal to encourage investments by firms. Accelerated depreciation has good economic insights behind it. By acceleration depreciation schedules firms have a greater incentive to purchase fixed assets for their businesses. Under the expenditure tax laws in place in Australia, the GST allows you to write off inputs in the same year as you pay the tax, further up the chain. But, in the case of company tax or personal tax, the items are depreciated over succeeding years. Accelerated depreciation tips the hand of a business owner towards putting in place investment that they might not otherwise have done. It is, in the view of many economists, a more efficient way of incentivising investment than changing the corporate rate.

But the key question is whether or not it is best done in a stable way which provides clear predictability or with sudden death cliffs. When Labor put out measure in place we did so at a $6,500 level, because we felt that that was what the economy could bear going forward. But yet in the coalition's first budget they decreased that threshold, taking it down from $6,500 to $1,000. Then, in their second budget, in the 2015 budget, they increased up to $20,000 but with a sudden death cut-off of 30 June 2017. The government now proposes to push out that cut-off to 30 June 2018, which pushes the problem down the road but does not put in place a stable level of accelerated depreciation for small business entities. Labor has held a clear and consistent position on accelerated depreciation. We opposed the government when they cut the accelerated depreciation threshold from $6,500 to $1,000. When the government increased it to $20,000, we also warned that that might be a level that was not sustainable. Indeed, this bill reflects the government's own concerns about the sustainability of a $20,000 threshold, because again a sudden death threshold is put in place. To look at accelerated depreciation threshold under the coalition is to look at a mountain range—a threshold which started at $6,500 dollars, plummeted to $1,000, went back up to $20,000 and then is scheduled now under this bill to drop back down again.

Let me be clear: Labor supports accelerated depreciation, and I have outlined the strong economic principles behind this. In that, we stand alongside the Council of Small Business Australia, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman and the Institute of Public Accountants. We recognise the value of a accelerated depreciation but, unlike the government, we also recognise the importance of setting policies for the long-term. Labor's small business policies are intended to create enduring growth. When we committed to the National Broadband Network with fibre to the premises and to getting the gigabit speeds that NBN connections with fibre to the home can now generate, we put in place a long-term policy. When Labor commits to investing in our schools, providing the human capital that small businesses need, again it is long-term investment. These things matter. I held a small business roundtable in Burnie. I was speaking to a small business owner there about his frustrations with the National Broadband Network. He told the story of the fact that with his small business he often has to upload large design files. He will set the upload going, walk down to the local cafe, come back and often finding the upload is still going. His connection is buffering and his business is suffering. The policies of this government on education also leave much to be desired. By ripping money out of schools and out of universities, the latest budget takes away the productive potential for Australian small businesses. Australian small businesses need a better human capital workforce than this government is giving to them. They need policies for the long-term, not sugar hits for the short-term.

Labor has also committed to access to justice reforms, and we took that to the last election. They will provide an opportunity for small businesses to take anticompetitive behaviour to court. Currently small businesses are deterred from taking up private litigation against anticompetitive behaviour because they are concerned about the armies of lawyers that the big end of town can array against them. The risk of having to pay the other side's legal fees if the action is unsuccessful is a significant deterrent. Labor's access to justice reforms restore the balance by letting small businesses request a 'no adverse costs' order early in a court case. It will help level the playing field and encourage more small businesses to take on anticompetitive behaviour and it reflects Labor's strong commitment to a level playing field in our competition laws. Labor believes that we need to have tougher penalties for anticompetitive conduct and that we need to double the ACCC's litigation budget. Labor believes that it is important for small businesses to be protected from dodgy phoenix operators through a director identification number, dealing with the fact that it is currently almost possible to register your dog as a director. The tax commissioner told the Senate yesterday, when answering a question from Senator Williams, that he could register Senator Williams as a director in a firm that he controlled and Senator Williams would not even know about it. That is why we need a director identification number: to protect honest small businesses. Labor's phoenixing policy also increases the penalties and gets the standard of proof right. These are pro small business measures from this side of the House.

But this measure, which is assisting small and medium businesses—by extending the turnover threshold from $2 million to $10 million—has a troubling deadline coming down the track. We on this side of the House are concerned that small businesses get the stability they need from a terribly unstable government. This government has chopped and changed prime ministers and ministers in portfolios across the board. We have had multiple ministers responsible for almost every single policy. Indeed, one of the policy areas for which I am responsible, the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission, has had no fewer than five coalition ministers responsible for it under the Abbott-Turnbull government.

Providing stability is about more than three word slogans such as 'jobs and growth'; it is about making sure that our tax laws, our competition laws and, indeed, our litigation rules are appropriate to look after the needs of small business. Labor's competition policies are pro-consumer but they will also assist start-up businesses. In Australia, we have had a troubling stagnation in the rate of new business formation over recent years. In a piece in the Monthly recently, Adam Triggs and I pointed out that, over the past couple of decades, we have seen a significant ramp-up in merger activity and a significant stagnation in small business start-up rates. One of the ways of spurring that is through appropriate competition laws. Labor's proposal is that we increase the civil penalties in the Australian Consumer Law from $1.1 million to $10 million. And we are very pleased this year to see the government finally falling into line and adopting that policy in the budget.

But we also call on the government to adopt the other pro-competition pro-small-business policies that we have been calling for. We call on them to adopt the European Union's penalty system for anti-competitive conduct. It is based on 30 per cent of the annual sales of the relevant product or service multiplied by the number of years over which the infringement took place and limited to the greater of 10 per cent of annual turnover or $2 million. We call on the government to double the ACCC's litigation budget from its current $24.5 million to $49 million.

We call on the government to give the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission an independent market studies power so it is able to undertake its own investigations on issues such as pricing discrepancies and increased market concentration. The government has called the consumer watchdog in on recent months over issues such as energy and the banking sector. But if the consumer watchdog had a market studies power, it could immediately be on the case rather than waiting to be given those additional powers on an ad hoc basis by the government of the day. Labor wants the act amended to apply higher penalties for conduct that targets or disproportionately impacts disadvantaged Australians and to encourage the consumer watchdog to focus its investigatory efforts on cases that affect disadvantaged Australians.

It is important that competition law, which goes back to the Trade Practices Act 1974—a great achievement of the Whitlam government—works for consumers and firms. Labor is the party of the Trade Practices Act; national competition policy under the Hawke and Keating governments; and the Australian Consumer Law and the criminalisation of cartels under the Rudd and Gillard government, with the leadership of the member for McMahon, Chris Bowen. Australians can trust Labor to get it right on competition policies and stable economic policies. Through our Access to Justice policy, our competition reforms and our commitment to ensuring the tax policies are right for the long term, Labor is truly the party of small business. We recognise that the measures in this bill will provide assistance to small and medium businesses. But we again raise our reservations about a measure which would have been recognised by Keynes, writing two generations ago, as better suited to temporary stimulus than to the ongoing stable policy that Australian small and medium size businesses so desperately need.

Mr TED O'BRIEN (Fairfax) (12:59): Why is it that whenever members opposite, members of the Labor Party, rise to make statements like we have just heard, that Labor is the party for small business and competition policy, they can only ever refer to the Hawke-Keating era? I think they are purposely ignoring the fact that they did go through that disastrous Rudd-Gillard-Rudd era, an era that they now wish to wash away from modern history, despite the fact that ever since that era, right through until today, the Labor Party has continued to be a party for the union movement only, and certainly not for small business. It is a party that has sought to stand in the way of reforms to competition policy that will level the playing field.

Let me come to Hawke and Keating in a few moments. I rise today in support of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Accelerated Depreciation For Small Business Entities) Bill 2017. There is little doubt that in the broad sweep of Australian politics it is the coalition that truly respects and understands the vital role that some 3.2 million small businesses, businesses employing 5.6 million people, play in our national economy. In the now distant past, during that Hawke-Keating golden age of reform to which the previous member referred, Labor did offer a very uncharacteristic glimpse of understanding of the small business sector. For a short while they supported the crucial role of that sector as the engine room of jobs and growth in the Australian economy. They did so, I probably should add, with support from the coalition, then the opposition.

However, such glimpses of hope from Labor are rare, and all too often it has fallen to the coalition, and the coalition alone, to restore and repatriate the confidence of small-business operators to a point where they again look to expand, to pursue new ideas by investing in themselves and creating jobs. In fact, helping small business, can I say, is part of our DNA. For generations the great Liberal Party, together with our coalition partners the Nationals and the old Country Party before them, have worked to support and give voice to millions of hardworking small business people and professionals, not to mention the millions of people they employ. These were Menzies's forgotten people, vividly brought to life only last week at Old Parliament House on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of Sir Robert's landmark broadcast of 22 May 1942.

Mr Brian Mitchell interjecting—

Mr TED O'BRIEN: I note that the members opposite who are calling out are very regretful that they were unable to attend at last week's event, for indeed they have listened to its recording since and they have taken some notes. There is no doubt that it is never too late for the Labor Party to learn from the great Robert Menzies, and I am delighted that members opposite clearly agree with that sentiment today.

But we are a long way from 1942, when Menzies made that wonderful speech. Or are we? Certainly we still have the lifters and leaners. We still have radical trade unions in the form of today's CFMEU and others. There is no heckling when I make that statement, so let me repeat it for the members opposite: we still do have those radical trade unions in the form of today's CFMEU and others. I note their heads are now buried in their chairs. Such groups are committed to workplace disruption and extortion, often backed up by the threat of violence, with no respect for the rule of law whatever. The new ACTU secretary is an obvious case in point. We still have big business, which today is even bigger business—vast multinationals—many acting as good corporate citizens while a powerful minority seek to siphon off huge fortunes in undeclared Australian tax dollars to low-tax jurisdictions elsewhere. And we still have the forgotten people, which include approximately 3.2 million small businesses, and their largely non-unionised staff—businesses that include the builders, the IT technicians, the bakers and heaven knows how many cafe owners. These are all members of today's forgotten people.

But they are not forgotten by the coalition, and certainly not forgotten by the Turnbull government. While Labor threatens to unpick the government's Enterprise Tax Plan at every opportunity and turns its back on small businesses, the Turnbull government is getting on with the business of delivering, of helping businesses to invest in the opportunities they need to grow and, most importantly, the opportunities that will help them generate jobs. By any measure, the government's instant asset write-off, or its accelerated depreciation treatment, which offers an immediate tax deduction with a threshold of $20,000 for newly acquired assets, has been an outstanding success. By extending this instant asset write-off for a further 12 months to 30 June 2018 while also providing broad incentives to cut red tape and changing the definition of small businesses to include those enterprises that have an annual turnover of up to $10 million, the coalition is delivering for today's forgotten people.

When first introduced in the 2015-16 tax year, the temporary increase in the instant asset write-off threshold, from $1,000 to $20,000, delivered an almost 30 per cent increase in the number of taxpaying entities claiming the deduction, while the dollar value claimed increased by some 140 per cent. And keep in mind that this was when it was limited to only $2 million businesses. With the recent change in definition of a small business from one with just up to a $2 million turnover to one with a $10 million turnover, the Turnbull government has yet again demonstrated how seriously it wants to deliver for this sector.

That reform of changing the definition will give access to the instant asset write-off for the forthcoming tax year to approximately 90,000 additional small businesses across Australia. To the mums and dads who own their own business, to the young entrepreneurs wanting to catch a break and to those who need a job or just more hours, this is very good news. While the extension of the instant asset write-off to 30 June 2018 is estimated to cost the budget $650 million over the forward estimates, and while the government holds budget repair as a key priority, this temporary measure to improve cash flow and capital investment for small business will not only create jobs but also boost productivity across the sector.

Small businesses, by their very nature, are generally more vulnerable and exposed to sudden adverse trading conditions. Such heightened trading risk and volatility, together with major capital expenditures early in the life of the new business, puts a significant strain on cash flow. This proves fatal for many fledgling enterprises. The opportunity for immediate deductibility will on most occasions improve cash flow for small businesses by allowing an instant deduction, in full, of up to $20,000 per item in the year the cost was incurred up to 30 June 2018. The small business sector is saying, 'Alleluia!'

A meaningful reduction in compliance costs, long the bane of small businesses, is a further but by no means insignificant benefit. There is a significant regulatory saving for small businesses not needing to maintain a depreciation schedule for assets up to the $20,000 threshold mark. No wonder this measure is popular, including with those opposite in the chamber today, who wish for this measure to go on for eternity. Although we would like to see that happen, we make this commitment time bound, because we on this side of the House understand the ongoing importance of fiscal discipline and the critical need to repair a budget that was so woefully damaged by those opposite when they were on the Treasury benches. James Pearson, CEO of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said:

Small businesses are particularly pleased to see the highly successful instant asset write-off extended to June 2018 …

Innes Willox, CEO of the Ai Group, said following the Treasurer's speech:

… the Budget provides a substantial boost for smaller businesses by lowering tax burdens, extending asset write-off eligibility and cutting red tape.

Andrew Conway, CEO of the Institute of Public Accountants, said:

We welcome this Budget for Australia's small businesses. This Budget provides small businesses with further confidence to employ, invest and grow.

The quotes from authoritative and respected business leaders are endless, but I will not go on, for they all reinforce the same point—that is, a uniform and glowing praise for this initiative and, moreover, for a federal budget that is poised to deliver so much for all Australians.

The temporary extension to June 2018 of the instant asset write-off of up to $20,000 for small businesses forms part of a broader, more comprehensive platform of targeted incentives under the government's 2017 budget that will help small businesses grow and deliver more jobs. Other key measures include small business tax cuts, reducing to 27½ per cent from 1 July this year; increasing the eligibility for small business tax concessions; a simpler BAS mechanism; the small business restructure rollover, removing the tax burden for small businesses that seek to transfer active assets; the scrapping of $5.8 billion in red tape; the easing of raising capital via crowdfunding changes; the clamping down on tax avoidance by large multinationals; and helping to create a level playing field for small businesses by taking action to prevent the misuse of market power. These reforms, taken together, show how serious the Turnbull coalition government is about helping small businesses and the millions of hardworking Australians they employ.

This is truly a coalition government cast in the image of Robert Menzies, that great leader of our nation, one with an unchangeable resolve—to always represent and fight for the 'Forgotten People'. It is for that reason that I wholeheartedly commend this bill to the House.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Vasta ): The question is that this bill be now read a second time. I call the honourable member for Parramatta and I want to compliment her on her coat of many colours.

Ms OWENS (Parramatta) (13:14): Thank you, Deputy Speaker. It is a local design, yet again—on indulgence. I am pleased to rise to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Accelerated Depreciation For Small Business Entities) Bill 2017. It is a bill that extends the current instant asset depreciation for small business from July 2017 through another year to 1 July 2018. As members opposite have said, and as members on this side have said, there are many businesses that are appreciative of this opportunity to depreciate their assets upfront rather than going through the usual lengthy depreciate process over several years. Depreciation in this way is a very effective way to incentivise investment. The official way it is put is that it encourages capital investment by small business through lowering the pre-tax rate of return required to justify new investments. What that essentially means is that it helps cash flow. So when a business buys an asset up to $20,000 in this financial year it can depreciate that asset in full in the tax for that year rather than doing that over several years. So it does not actually reduce the amount, but it brings it forward. In doing so, it is a cash-flow benefit.

One of the problems I have with this bill is that it handles depreciation, which is an incredibly important incentivising tool, in a rather inconsistent way. I am going to talk a little bit about the history of instant asset depreciation because it is six or seven years old now. It was first introduced in the Tax Laws Amendment (Stronger, Fairer, Simpler and Other Measures) Bill 2011 by the previous Labor government when the Labor government increased the threshold from $1,000 to $6,500 as part of a broader package of tax reforms. It was within the period of the global financial crisis. It was also stimulatory.

I remember going out to my community at the time and talking to businesses that provided equipment to other businesses, whether that was refrigeration, air conditioning or solar panels, and walking through with them how this bringing forward of depreciation could actually benefit them in their selling of assets to business. It was actually designed to be stimulatory and to stimulate investment by the small business sector, and it was effective. It was passed in 2011 and introduced in 2012. It was $6½ thousand in perpetuity. We just raised the threshold. Small business knew that, from that point forward, that would be the rule. It meant that they did not have to adjust their investment decisions around changing rules. They knew what they were; they were there, we thought, in perpetuity. It was a good thing. It was a recommendation made by experts in the tax field and it was one that we were pleased to take up at that time.

Unfortunately, when the Abbott government was elected one of the first things it did in the 2014 budget was abolish the $6½ thousand threshold and take it back down to $1,000. So it was introduced in 2012; in 2014, it went from $6½ thousand back down to $1,000. It was something that we thought was a strange decision from a government that considered itself to be pro-business. It was a government that would get up and talk about how it supported small business, yet one of its first actions was to take away something that was actually greatly appreciated by small business.

Then, a little while later, we saw that the government changed its mind. In 2016, we saw the asset threshold raised to $20,000 for two years. So in the budget—in 2015, I think—it was announced that it would go up to $20,000. It was $6½ thousand; it was reduced down to $1,000; a couple years later, they increased it again up to $20,000. But it was only for two years. It was only up until 1 July 2017. This meant that small businesses were now in a position where, if they bought their assets before 30 June, they had favourable treatment on their cash flow. If they bought them after 30 June 2017, they were back down to $1,000 again. In my community I was talking to businesses about that. It calls businesses, in many ways, to plan their investment decisions around the changing tax rate—around the changing threshold for depreciation. That is never a good thing. I remember saying to businesses, 'I can't give you advice, but this is cash flow here. You don't invest in something because of this, you invest in something that you need. You should do it in the time frame that suits your business.' This, of course, was an incredibly powerful incentive for businesses to think about their investment strategies in relation to the threshold. When the cliff comes on 30 June 2017, you are back to $1,000. It is quite a different story than if you buy the month before.

Now we have the government, in May, announcing that it is extending one more time, up until July 2018. We on this side of the House are going to support it. As we said in 2011 when we introduced the initial accelerated depreciation, it is a very effective way of incentivising investment. But we would argue that it is more a way of incentivising investment in the long term if it is actually consistent—if you do not keep changing the rules and causing businesses to alter their investment strategies to maximise the benefit from the rules before they change again. Now we have had, in 2012, from $1,000 to $6,500; in 2014 up to $20,000; there was supposed to be a cliff in July this year and now it is extended for a year. In July 2018 we go back to $1,000.

We are going to support it, and there will be many businesses that manage to use this accelerated depreciation to invest in ways that they otherwise might not have thought possible because of the lengthy depreciation schedule. It is a good thing, but we would argue very strongly that if the government has a genuine commitment to using accelerated depreciation as an investment incentive, they should choose a number that they think is sustainable over the long term and apply that, so that business can actually go about its long-term planning of its investment decisions rather than changing them from year to year as the government changes its mind. So it is good for some, but not as good as it would be if we had a government that was genuinely using accelerated depreciation as more than a marketing ploy, as a genuine indication of its commitment to small business.

I said in the appropriation speech this morning that in many ways the government has, rather than a vision, a storyboard. It decides how to make something look good and that is what it announces. In some ways this is that. 'We are good for small business because we have extended it for a year.' Again I would urge the government to consider finding a final position on this and giving small business certainty moving forward. You know that we on this side of the House are in favour of that. I doubt that you would have any trouble at all convincing us that a permanent change to the accelerated depreciation rate is in order. We did it once. I have no doubt that the negotiation would be very fast and smooth and we could come to some kind of agreement, because in the long run it is good for business to have certainty over something as important as this.

There were a number of other changes that the government made back in 2014, like removing the $6,500 threshold, that were actually not good for small business. One of them was the abolition of the loss carry back. Labor had introduced it after consultation and advice from an incredible number of tax professionals. It allowed businesses that made a loss this year to draw on the tax that they had paid up to two years prior to cover that loss. Again, it was one of those incentivising tax rules which allow a business that has been making a profit to make a loss this year and then draw on it. So it incentivises investment, just like accelerated depreciation does. But the government abolished that one as well. On my side of the House, facing a government that claims to be pro small business and claims to be about incentives and investment, to see it doing something which was so negative was quite a surprise. Again, I urge the government to consider their position on that as well. It was an incredibly effective reform. It was genuine reform, at the time, and it was a great shame for many small businesses to see it go. There were many voices saying that at the time. There are fewer now because, I suspect, they do not see the government as serious on tax reform at all, except in this sugar-hit style that we are seeing today in the extension of an accelerated depreciation rate for one year only. It was important reform, and I urge the government to consider it.

I also urge the government to act on a few other things that there has been talk about recently. There was an incredibly important report on late payments from the small business ombudsman. Anyone who has run a small business, and I have, and anyone who talks to small businesses, knows that late payments are quite often the things that kill you. You can actually go out of business not because you are not viable—because you are viable—but because you do not get paid on time. In the music business, when I used to run the trade association, I used to make a not very funny joke that if every small business and large business got into a room on the same day and all handed over our money at the same time, it would clear up a whole stack of back payments. I had one situation where one company owed me $80,000 and I owed them $400. They could not net it out; I had to pay them the $400 before they paid me the $80,000. So there were people waiting for that payment, as well. I am absolutely familiar with what even a delay of a couple of weeks can do. It is an incredibly important report, and I would say that finding a solution to that—and this side of the House would be very willing—would be more valuable than whatever tax cuts and whatever accelerated depreciation you can give them. Solving that one, which actually allows businesses to be paid for the work they do relatively soon to the time they have to pay the costs of providing that service, would make an extraordinary difference.

I also urge the government to consider the impact of power costs and gas prices on business at the moment. We are hearing from some of the big businesses about how difficult life is becoming because of the size of their power bills. We have seen wholesale prices double since this government was elected—double since this government was elected. I had to say that twice, because that is an extraordinary change. We know what has happened to gas prices, and there are many, many big businesses already speaking loudly, but there are also many small businesses that are just suffering it, and trying to get through the next week and the next week after that, as their prices go up and up and up.

I also urge the government to heed the calls from small business to fix the NBN. I was out in a country town recently trying to buy a beautiful pottery tea set from an art gallery between here and the snow. It is not in the middle of nowhere; it is actually on the highway between here and the snow. He spent half an hour trying to take my money. In the end, he stood in the paddock with his credit-card reader trying to get a signal—walking around in the paddock trying to get a signal so he could take my money. If it had been in the city I would have said, 'Forget it; I'm not waiting half an hour.' I did have somewhere to go, but I felt so sorry for the guy I actually stayed there for half an hour trying to give the guy the opportunity to take my money. Businesses want customers that are willing to pay, and I was willing to pay. In this case, I could not pay, because the technology was not there. I suspect that businesses know better today than then. We are talking here about the simplest use of NBN, which is simply to take a payment. That is before you get to the possibilities of staff that live in different cities and still manage to work in a virtual office and before you get to the upload side of things. We really have to fix that, and I really urge the government to understand how seriously they damaged the capacity of business when they stuffed around with the NBN and went back to copper. It was a serious, serious step back in time.

Also, there is work on phoenixing. We all know that when companies phoenix—and many of them do it as a pattern, as repeat offenders—that it is small business that wears the cost. We all know someone who did the work and has no chance of being paid, and we all know businesses that have gone to the wall, not because they were not viable, but because there were people who were deliberately phoenixing in order to avoid payments. We have a government that does not seem prepared to act on that. The 'government of small business' does not seem prepared to act on that. There are many things still to do. Congratulations on this one, even though it is one year only, but there is much, much, much more to do.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Coulton ): The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour.

Ms PRICE (Durack) (16:16): I rise to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Accelerated Depreciation For Small Business Entities) Bill 2017. It is worth noting that I follow the member for Barker. I believe he is a true champion of the small business sector, even though he may not believe that himself, so it is timely that we are talking about what is great about small businesses and how we are supporting them. This bill amends the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 to enable small businesses with aggregated annual turnover of less than $10 million to claim an immediate tax deduction for eligible individual assets costing less than $20,000 first used, installed or ready by 30 June 2018.

This bill extends by 12 months the popular and successful 2015-16 budget measure 'Growing Jobs and Small Business—expanding accelerated depreciation for small businesses'. This is welcome news. This legislation was introduced in 2015 after extensive stakeholder consultation, including with the Australian Taxation Office, small business stakeholder groups and professional tax and accounting bodies. There has been very strong stakeholder support for extending this measure in addition to all the other hundreds of small businesses around the country. Extending the time in which small businesses can depreciate capital expenditures at the higher threshold will improve cash flow and business activity by releasing those funds back to the small business owner that would otherwise be tied up in depreciating assets. This is good news for small business.

So why are small businesses so important? A strong and successful small business community means simply more jobs for Australians and more opportunities to build vibrant local communities right across the country. Small business employs by far the highest number of Australians when compared to any other sector. We all know that. We hear that almost daily in this place. There are more than six million Australians employed in small businesses across Australia. Small businesses create employment and pay tax at a rate not seen by any other sector in our business community. That is why it is so important for all of us in here to support small business, to support those people in this country who are simply having a go. They are putting their own money at risk. As we heard from the member for Barker, sometimes they do not get paid because the staff have to be paid first.

My electorate is known for its big business—the miners, the oil and gas companies. Those big businesses generate billions of dollars into our economy and we are all very grateful for that. But there are also 16,000 small businesses in my electorate of Durack. Those small businesses drive our regional economies, they drive regional employment and, by extension, they drive regional growth and development. Without small business, our regional economies would simply fall in a hole. We have seen that especially with the downturn of the construction of the various mining projects. The small businesses have really been the glue that has held many of our regional communities together.

You and I both know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that governments do not create jobs, but they do create opportunity, and that is indeed what the private sector does with our support—enterprising Australians who have a work ethic and a propensity for risk, who start their own business, who identify a gap in the market, who work day and night to get themselves ahead. I want to applaud all of those thousands of small businesses in Durack, people who get up every morning and then go to bed at night knowing that they are going to have to do it all over again the next day. These are the people who create opportunity, and they create jobs. Government merely creates the policy to support these people, and we should be backing small businesses every day.

That is why I and many other members on this side of the House are proud to support those people. I am proud to say that we come here with a policy agenda that aims to cut the red tape and cut the costs involved in investing in a small business. Sadly, we know that those opposite have shown a complete lack of interest in supporting these types of measures that will really support the engine room of Australia and some of the other policies this government is seeking to push through this parliament in order to secure jobs and secure growth in the future. Those members opposite have instead sought to fall back on the usual rank hypocrisy, as is their wont, and instead are criticising, as we have heard numerous times over the last couple of weeks, our government's corporate tax cut initiatives. And that is in spite of comments made by their leader, their Treasurer, their Assistant Treasurer and their Minister for Finance. These four are all on record as supporting a cut to company tax—and we will get back to that particular issue shortly.

We have heard from many of our small business contacts throughout the electorate that the extension of this depreciation initiative is one of the highlights of the federal budget. And why wouldn't it be? This is very easily one of the most popular small business incentives and encourages the almost 3.2 million small businesses in Australia to invest in themselves and create job opportunities for their fellow Australians. This government has a proven record of supporting the small business sector by building up the engine room of the economy. We can guarantee growth, we can guarantee investment, we can guarantee lifestyle and we can guarantee jobs if we back the small business sector.

But I am not sure that those opposite understand this simple concept. They seem to think that jobs simply fall from the sky. Well, maybe in the various jobs they have worked in that is what happens, but you and I both know that it takes hard work and it needs a good policy agenda to ensure that small business is supported so it can grow, so we can create the jobs of the future and make sure our grandchildren have a job. But those opposite seem to think our 25 consecutive years of growth is something that just happens by accident. But, put simply, if a business owner is given an incentive—and they are, in this legislation—to invest in their business, to receive a tax break, then they will. That investment allows them to expand, and hopefully that expansion will create a job or two. That can then be repeated across the 3.2 million small businesses in Australia.

This feeds into this government's holistic approach to job creation, wage growth and training. We have committed to cutting small business tax as well as the corporate tax rate to keep us economically competitive. Make no mistake: as global economies become more interconnected and capital flows across jurisdictions far more than it used to, we enter a new era of corporate competition. Australians are no longer competing for jobs against those who studied for the same degree as they did, perhaps at UWA or Curtin; they are competing with graduates from around the world. And for Australia as a nation it is no different. We need to be creating the perfect conditions for foreign investment, because to do so ensures that our young people have good jobs to move into once they finish their degree of choice. That means that a variety of measures, including a lower maximum income tax rate and a lower corporate tax rate, are of benefit to us.

We know that, by doing all of those things, we will get growth and we will create jobs. By and large, this is just a sensible approach to ensure the jobs are created. The hypocrisy, time and time again, displayed by those opposite on this issue is as breathtaking as anything that we have seen previously. The following is a direct quote from the Leader of the Opposition when he was Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation back in 2012:

Any student of Australian business and economic history since the mid-80s knows that part of Australia's success was derived through the reduction in the company tax rate.

Those words are direct from—we will not say the horse's mouth because that might sound unparliamentary. This is simply one of the arrows in this government's quiver that we are aiming to bring to bear on the issue of joblessness and slowing growth. But there are many other measures in the budget that we have just brought down recently which are going to lead to improvement in growth.

This government has introduced several programs that will address issues around unemployment and, by extension, address our rising welfare bill, our slowing growth and our rising debt. We are aware of these issues, as you are, Mr Deputy Speaker Irons, and we are, no doubt, putting our shoulder to the grind and developing some policy that is actually going to help. Rather than follow the example of those opposite and throw money at our welfare bill and, sadly, our ballooning debt, we are sticking to the simple concept that the best form of welfare anyone can have is a job. And I know that you know that only too well, Mr Deputy Speaker.

When someone gets a job there are a large amount of flow-on effects that come with it. We know that their health improves, resulting in less public spending on health. We know that these people are then able to afford rent and, maybe if they are lucky, afford to save for a deposit, together with the new—it is such a great initiative that I have forgotten the words! We have the assistant minister down here. It is relating to helping people get into their first home. I have forgotten the words!

Honourable members interjecting—

Ms PRICE: That is it. It is good that we have a lot of these initiatives that are going to help young people get into their first job.

We all know that people with jobs experience a boost to their self-esteem, meaning they have more drive and motivation to apply for, and continue in, employment. And, hopefully, they will be able to proceed along those lines. There is no government welfare program that can deliver those benefits. There is no welfare program that can benefit anybody quite like a job can. That is why the employment programs that we have introduced are so important. It is why I am proud to stand on this side of the House with a suite of employment programs aimed at mobilising the unemployed and getting as many as we can into an appropriate job.

You may have heard, Mr Deputy Speaker, that we have just recently rolled out the Youth Jobs PaTH program, which will benefit those in the largest city in my electorate, Geraldton. I have to say: I just saw a media release before I left. The City of Geraldton itself has taken on a couple of interns with respect to this program. That was literally before I came here. That is, indeed, good news. The reason why it is good news is Geraldton, at the last assessment, had an unemployment rate of about 8.5 per cent, which is some 2.5 per cent above the state average. So they need all the help they can get. So good on the City of Geraldton for taking on a couple of young interns. My electorate of Durack, as a whole, has 3,700 young people aged between 15 and 24 who are not currently employed. This needs to stop. This has to be addressed. This is urgent. This is what this government is aiming to address. Geraldton really needs more employment programs just like I have described. I am very glad to see that this program has been rolled out.

The other thing that I would like to touch on is the shipbuilding program and the benefits that Western Australia will get from defence spending. This is why we need to be supporting our businesses and our industries, so there is actually a job available for young jobseekers to take. We need to promote those industries that encourage the employment of our jobseekers. In Geraldton, I recently hosted the Centre for Defence Industry Capability and the Department of Defence, and I represented the Minister for Defence Industry, Christopher Pyne, in detailing how the important $89 billion naval shipbuilding program could provide opportunities for the city and the region, and more broadly for regional Western Australia.

We know that there is a tremendous degree of skill in Geraldton and more broadly in the Mid West with respect to the marine industry. But there is also a high degree of engineering capability in the city, coming off the back of the mining industry, which could be diversified into the shipbuilding, maintenance and sustainment work. In the Mid West there are several companies involved in the commercial boatbuilding industry and several more with potential to be involved in the supply chain for these vessels. This is really great news and a fabulous opportunity for anyone who is looking to diversify their business, because we know that the potential for a student currently studying in year 12 to spend their entire life working in the shipbuilding industry and also in Western Australia is now a real possibility, and it is something that we should celebrate every day we come into this place.

I am almost out of time, but to round out all the opportunities in the budget I just want to give another shout out to the Geraldton Universities model, which is going to allow regional kids to stay at home. This is what we strive for in regional Western Australia and in Australia more broadly so that a young person does not need to pack their bags and be a financial impost on their family. It is something I am particularly proud of. We got a commitment of $15 million in the budget, and it is certainly going to help young people to get the education that they deserve.

Ms TEMPLEMAN (Macquarie) (16:31): I think it is interesting that yet again from the member for Durack we hear claims that nobody on this side of the House has any idea about small business, yet there are people here who have been in small business for much of their career. There are people who have partners in small business. It really behoves those opposite to take a look at the expertise on our benches. You are going to be looking at it all too soon from the other side if you are lucky enough to still be here.

Labor will support the Treasury Laws Amendment (Accelerated Depreciation For Small Business Entities) Bill 2017 to extend by 12 months to 30 June 2018 the period in which small business entities can temporarily access expanded accelerated depreciation rules. And I am not going to have to switch this speech into a speech about jobseekers and universities, because I will be able to talk about small business and what we want to see for small business for my remaining 14 minutes and five seconds.

Labor recognises that Australia's small businesses make a huge contribution to our national prosperity, including providing a livelihood for millions of Australians. Over two million businesses—sole traders, partnerships, trusts and small employers—have helped underpin more than 25 years of continuous economic growth. In my electorate of Macquarie, there are around 11,000 businesses, with around 5,000 of those employing one person or more locally. Until July last year, I ran a small businesses. Those opposite look a bit surprised: 'Gosh—are people who support Labor allowed to run businesses?' In fact that is how I came to appreciate the benefits to the economy that a Labor government brings. I started a business when things were definitely tough for the country, but we had the right policies in place to take us through. I grew up in small business. My father was a newsagent. I looked at what it takes to be a good employer, to know that you are making money out of your staff but that you are treating them as family. Then you have a loyalty—something those opposite have no comprehension of.

Labor is very proud to have led the debate in this policy area. I believe that in recent years in particular we have offered really practical policies to support Australia's industrious small business sector. Above all, we know that if people do not have cash in their pockets to spend in their local businesses, those local businesses will not survive. And that is one of the key things those opposite do not understand. They do not appreciate the impact that taking penalty rates out of someone's pocket is going to have in my electorate from 1 July.

Last year, we took a comprehensive suite of small business policies to the federal election including a responsible plan to cut company tax for small businesses with turnovers of less than $2 million. As a small-business person, I struggle to understand how you can justify a $10 million turnover for a small business. Once you are turning over $10 million, unless you are doing something really, really clever that I am not sure would be legal, you really have to question whether you are running as a medium-size business, with all the supports that your staff need, or whether you are simply running as a small, do-it-all-yourself business. I would argue that once you start to get up past $2 million, you should be putting in the supports of a medium-sized business. We are very firm that businesses with under a $2 million a year turnover definitely deserve that extra incentive for the hard work that we all know they do.

We also took to the election a plan to level the playing field for small businesses by ensuring that multinationals pay their fair share of tax. There is nothing worse, as a small business, than seeing this uneven playing field where these gods up here seem to get away with blue murder and you, the small-business person working seven days a week, often 15 or 16 hours a day, giving up your Sundays to do your MYOB, can see the unfairness of that situation. We also took a plan to help small businesses incorporate without additional red tape, because we recognise that a lot of businesses do miss out on some of the tax benefits by not being incorporated, yet they do find it daunting to go through the current process. We also took a range of other innovative policies to assist small businesses better access finance and help entrepreneurs start their own businesses.

I am pleased to say that Labor has continued to fight for small business in this parliament, and I am pleased to have been part of that fight. We continue to develop and advocate for policy that will benefit Australian small businesses, helping them to grow and prosper. I just want to talk about a couple of those policies. In February we introduced into the Senate the Competition and Consumer Legislation Amendment (Small Business Access to Justice) Bill 2017. These access to justice reforms would help small businesses take cases of anticompetitive behaviour to court. Can you imagine what it is like as a small business when you are up against one of the big guys? It is bad enough in the advertising war, let alone when there is a legal issue at stake. We know small businesses are less likely to take up private litigation against anticompetitive behaviour. It is just too daunting. There is too much at stake—often their home. It is because big businesses have deep pockets and armies of lawyers, so the risk of small businesses being overwhelmed and having to pay the big business's legal fees is a significant obstacle. The Productivity Commission and the government's own competition review say that small businesses are disadvantaged in the court process. But the Turnbull government has refused to address this inequity. Labor's bill will restore the balance by letting a small business request a no adverse costs order very early in the court case. This will help level the playing field, give them confidence to pursue cases and encourage more small businesses to take on anticompetitive behaviour.

The other policy area that we have done a lot of work on and have announced is a package of reforms to tackle illegal company phoenixing, a practice that often leaves small businesses—tradies, people who have put in the blood, sweat and tears—ending up with no money. They end up with unpaid debts that they are never able to recover. They have bought the materials, they have done the work, they have paid their staff but no-one is paying their bills. I draw the House's attention to some comments that were made just yesterday by the Australian Taxation Office commissioner, Chris Jordan, who confirmed that there really is a need for action on dodgy phoenix operators who deliberately burn companies in an attempt to avoid their obligations to employees, taxpayers and honest businesses. The tax commissioner told a Senate estimates committee: 'This is not a new issue. Phoenixing is a big problem, especially when you have these people that are unassociated with the principles. You cannot keep track.' There we have the ATO telling us how difficult it is to keep track of people intent on doing the wrong thing. When speaking about how easy it is to become a company director in Australia, Mr Jordan said this to a senator: 'I could appoint you as a company director without you even knowing and me then controlling the company.' That shows you the holes that there are at the moment. The tax commissioner also noted: 'In other countries proper identification checks are required for anyone wanting to become a director.' Apparently, here, you can almost register your dog as a company director because there are no checks required.

Illegal phoenix activity costs our economy billions of dollars annually, and that is why we have announced the following measures. First, we want to require all company directors to obtain a unique director identification number, with a 100-point identification and check. We expect this of so many other people. If you are on Centrelink you have to have a number. If you are receiving a Medicare benefit you have a unique number and it does not change. If you are registering for any other government facility or service you need a number. Yet, for some reason, you can set up a business and not be identified. So the 100-point check is a really good step. It is only as hard as getting a bank account.

Second, increasing penalties will also be associated with phoenix activity; third, we want to introduce an objective test for transactions depriving employees of their entitlements; and, fourth, we want to clarify the availability of compensation orders against accessories. These measures are based on recommendations from the Melbourne Law School/Monash Business School Phoenix Research Team recommendations. They are well thought through and they are very much needed.

It is just not us calling for a director identification number; among the people who think it might not be such a bad idea are the Productivity Commission, the Australian institute of Company Directors, the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Master Builders Australia, the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the Australian Restructuring Insolvency and Turnaround Association and, of course, the Phoenix Project. So you do have to wonder why, when it is such a sensible idea, that is not the legislation that we are discussing right now.

But let me turn to the instant asset write-off. It was Labor who first identified the value for Australian small businesses in increasing the immediate deductibility threshold. I remember when Labor was in government in 2012 that the threshold for small businesses to write off capital purchases increased from $1,000 to $6,500. That increase meant that it became a bit easier to buy, say, the $3,000 piece of equipment and receive deductibility in the same financial year. That was a good move for a small business that wanted to become slightly bigger.

I first became aware of the whole cost-of-growth issue as a fledgling business in the early nineties. As a journalist I had reported on the issue of cost of growth in the eights from Old Parliament House, but I had not really understood it until I experienced—the issue being, of course, that if you want to grow your business there is often a significant leap of faith that you have to take to hire more people, rent bigger premises or buy a new piece of equipment. A higher instant asset write-off does not solve all those problems at once, but it does mean that the cost of an asset is defrayed more quickly in one go rather than by using depreciation over several years.

As a small business operator, I was pretty shocked that, among the many horrors of the 2014-15 budget, the Abbott wound back this successful Labor initiative. It reinforced my view that Liberal governments might pay lip-service to small business but, at their heart, they are a friend of big business every single time. They only come to the side of small business when they are dragged kicking and screaming. And, thankfully, they were dragged. Just 12 months later, the Abbott government belatedly recognised the error of their way and appreciated the value of Labor's instant asset write-off policy, reinstating and extending it to $20,000.

While Labor does welcome the Turnbull government's decision to extent the small business instant asset write-off, we also note that this measure is expected to cost the budget almost $1 billion in 2018-19. With this expense on the budget, Labor wants to ensure that the predicted economic benefits are being delivered. And we call on the government to evaluate and release the evaluation in full prior to any further extension. That is a sensible measure. I think small businesses would also like to see what the economic benefit is. They are frugal with their money. They know you just cannot throw it around. They would appreciate knowing that an initiative has not just been for their benefit but has also been for a broader economic benefit.

Regrettably, this budget has failed to address many other significant issues facing Australian small business. Small business owners right across the country have talked to Labor and, in my electorate of Macquarie, have talked to me about rising energy costs, inadequate broadband infrastructure and late or delayed payments as key priorities for them and some of the things that they want the government to address.

Waiting for payment—and I speak from experience—is debilitating for a small business. Getting the cash flow right is one of the biggest challenges that you face as a small business, because the first thing you do is pay your staff and your overheads; the last thing you do is pay yourself, let alone put anything aside for super. This budget contains no effort to address the payment terms problem exposed in the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman's recent report into the practice. This is another issue we need to see addressed.

The NBN—it is hard to know where to start. The hopelessness of the NBN rollout in the electorate of Macquarie has really put pressure on small businesses. The reliance on fibre to the node in the upper Blue Mountains is a major issue for all sorts of professionals who run their businesses from home or who like to work from home some of the time. For an architect, for an engineer, for the accounting firms shifting large volumes of data or for the creatives in my electorate who want to upload amazing video and digital data, it is really difficult. In fact, one of my small businesses has had to relocate from the Blue Mountains down to the bottom of the mountains in Penrith, in the seat of Lindsay, where, thanks to Labor, he can access fibre to the premises. NBN should have been a game changer and a way to improve the economy in regions like mine, which are a long way from the CBD. Sadly, that is not going to be the case. This budget was an opportunity for the government to prioritise small business and for the Prime Minister to prioritise small business over his best friends at the big end of town. Yet, again, the Prime Minister and this government failed.

Mr RICK WILSON (O'Connor) (16:46): I rise today to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Accelerated Depreciation For Small Business Entities) Bill 2017. This bill provides for the extension of the instant asset write-off provision, which was introduced in the May 2015 budget. The provision allows small businesses with a turnover of up to $10 million—it has been increased from $2 million—to claim an instant deduction on capital equipment up to the value $20,000. I thank the member for Macquarie for her support for this terrific initiative. It is good to see the member for Paterson here as well supporting small business. I suspect that these members will be trotted out fairly regularly when the opposition talk about small business. Their entire contingent is here, I think. It is good to see you are here supporting small businesses.

Mr Deputy Speaker Irons, if I may, I would like to use you as an example of a small businessman who has carved out a very successful career. I know that you were described as a 'privileged white man' during the election campaign, but I happen to know that you did come from humble beginnings. You got a trade and developed a very successful business. That, to me, embodies the story of small business—people can come from any type of beginning and if they have some initiative, are prepared to work hard and are prepared to take a risk, they can carve out a successful business and a very good life for themselves and their family. I take my hat off to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the success that you have made of your life and your business.

Before I get into the detail of the legislation and how it impacts on my electorate, I want to thank Minister McCormack, who visited my electorate of O'Connor several weeks ago, just before the budget was handed down. We held a series of forums. They were very well attended by very well-engaged small businesspeople across the electorate. The minister was accompanied by Kate Carnell, who is the Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman; Dr Michael Schaper, who is the Deputy Chairman of the ACCC, and Les De Wind, who is an Assistant Commissioner with the ATO. I know that the small businesspeople across my electorate found those forums very useful. They were well attended. It was a worthwhile exercise. Once again, I thank the minister.

Just prior to the 2016 election, I was reading the Fairfax newspaper. The Treasurer had just announced a better than expected growth figure. Of course, our friends in the media—as we can always rely on them to do—were trying to find a negative spin on that particular number. I think it was about 2.75 per cent. It was about 0.5 per cent above expected growth. Fairfax were running a story, asking: 'Where is the poor growth? Where is the growth not happening?' This was so that they could identify some areas and go to town on us about that.

So I thought I had better read this story because I just wanted to know where my electorate of O'Connor sat in the scheme of things. I opened the story online and had a look at the table, and there, right at the top of the 150 electorates, was the electorate of O'Connor and of course the electorate of Durack, represented by my dear friend Melissa. There was 11.6 per cent growth in the case of O'Connor and I think 11.7 per cent growth in the case of Durack.

People may say, 'Well, these electorates have large mining interests in them.' At that point in time, in 2015-16, we were seeing a significant contraction in the mining industry. So where was this growth coming from? I can tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker Irons, that there is only one source where that sort of growth could have come from: the 18,765 small businesses across my electorate. So I salute them and I acknowledge their achievements. I say to them here in this place that this government is here to support them going forward.

I want to bring the conversation back to the instant tax write-off. I will use the example of a business which does not actually operate in my electorate, but which certainly sells an enormous amount of product into my electorate. It is the Heiniger company, which is run by a very good friend of mine Garry Lyon. They produce shearing gear, among other things, and also wool presses. The TPW wool press is the most-recognised brand of wool press around the country. They are far and away the best, and designed and manufactured in Western Australia down at Bibra Lake. As I said, that is not in my electorate but it is a wonderful business.

I asked the managing director, Garry Lyon, about 12 months ago, 'How's the instant tax write-off working out for you guys?' It just so happens that a wool press is about $19,990. He said that they just could not keep up. They could not keep up; they were putting staff on and trying to train people up but they just could not keep up with the demand. That is exactly what this scheme is about. It is about generating more jobs, more investment and more economic activity. This is one side of the equation.

The other side of the equation, of course, is to allow other businesses which need equipment or which need to upgrade equipment to purchase that equipment and get the tax deduction effectively up-front. So those are the two sides of the equation—stimulating demand for those businesses that produce assets in that price range and also for the businesses that require assets in that price range. Those may be new display cabinets in a deli or some new shelving in a newsagency. It is those types of investments back into the business, to stimulate demand for that business and to bring forward jobs.

I want to run through some of the different types of businesses across my electorate of O'Connor, because it is a wonderful and varied electorate. I am very proud that we have such a diversity of businesses. Of course, agriculture is a very important business across the electorate. I am a farmer myself so that is the industry that I understand the best and it is the industry that I am very proud of. Agriculture across the electorate of O'Connor produces around 40 per cent of the Australian wheat crop in an average year. We do dry land farming better than probably anywhere else in the world. I have been learning a lot about irrigated farming on the east coast as part of the agriculture committee and with the member for Paterson, and I am thoroughly enjoying that, but when it comes to dry land farming we are as good as any there is in the world.

The free trade agreements that the government has signed are seeing a real impact in our export activity, particularly in the areas of meat, wool and grains. That area of my electorate, that industry, is certainly going extremely well. There are subdued grain prices at the moment, admittedly, but there are record high beef prices, record high sheepmeat prices and record high wool prices. So we are going pretty well. We just need it to rain, and I am sure it will sooner or later.

We have a very significant horticultural sector down in the south-west part of the electorate—down around Manjimup and Pemberton. There are some wonderful businesses down there in the southern forests producing world-class produce. I know that people like the Newton Brothers and Harvey Giblett are exporting some of the best apples you will ever eat into South-East Asia. The Bendotties are exporting from their potato plant, once again into South-East Asia and doing great work. Those businesses are the sort of businesses that will be out there at the moment looking at their end-of-year financial figures and thinking, 'We can pick up a bit of new gear before the end of the financial year and write that off pretty quickly.'

Tourism is a very important sector in my electorate. There are thousands of small tourism operations, whether they be hotels, motels and cafes along the south coast and up through the Goldfields. They have been doing it pretty tough in many respects, but we are starting to see the wheel turn. Those businesses are well run and will make a big contribution going forward.

Forestry is a growing industry. We saw a lot of plantation going on 10 to 15 years ago, we are now moving into the harvest phase. There are some big businesses involved in the harvesting. The transport of those chips to the port is a very important aspect of that business. There are a lot of owner-driver small-business operators involved in that sector. With road transport, Southern Transport and Esperance Freight Lines are businesses that probably do exceed the $10 million, because they are very big businesses now that they have grown into substantial businesses. They have been extraordinarily well run in a very competitive environment, and those businesses have really outcompeted the competition from the bigger metropolitan areas. They are based in the electorate and I am very proud of them.

Certainly everyone would associate Kalgoorlie and the Goldfields with the mining industry. The mining companies are big businesses for the most part. Some of them started as small businesses. That is the great thing about the mining industry, particularly around the Goldfields: you can start off with a tenement, drill a few holes, find a bit of gold and all of a sudden you get to the share market, you get some capital and all of a sudden you can be a big business. There are a lot of people out there having a go at that. That is what I love about the mining industry, particularly the gold mining industry. But the mining industry requires a lot of support services. Those support services are mainly based around Kalgoorlie. They include engineering businesses. I have visited Harlsan Industries and taken the minister for industry there. I have been to Newlands engineering and taken the minister for resources there. These businesses are world leaders in what they produce. They are producing mining technology that we are exporting to the world, bringing in much export income to this country. They are world leaders.

Engineering is only part of it. We have tyre supply places. We have mechanics, we have hydraulic fitters. The number of small businesses around Kalgoorlie that service the mining industry is extraordinary. Those fellas up their work very hard. They work 12-hour days as a minimum, a starting point, and they work longer if they have to.

Those businesses work very hard and they do deserve a tax break. That is what brings me next to cutting the company tax rate to 27.5 per cent this financial year for businesses earning up to $10 million. I think that is a great initiative of this government. Those hardworking small-business people are out there growing our economy, contributing to that 11.6 per cent growth in O'Connor. They need a reward for their effort, so they are made to feel like the government does not just have its hand in their pocket taking the bulk of their hard-earned revenue.

I fear for those small businesses, because the opposition, it would appear, will reverse those tax cuts. It does not appear that they have accounted for that loss in revenue to the budget through the tax cuts in any way shape or form. So I fear for those small businesses that at the next election the opposition will be taking a tax hike to those small businesses. Of course, over time we are going to extend that 27.5 per cent tax cut to a 25c in the dollar rate. That could all be in jeopardy at the next election. But if we continue to govern and win the next election we will be extending the reduced tax rate to companies over $25 million and from 1 July 2018 that will be extended to businesses over $50 million. So that will pick up most of those businesses across my electorate, bar those very large mining companies.

There are a couple of other tax issues that I just want to touch on while I am speaking on the issue of small business. There is the tax reform delivered in the agricultural white paper, and that is: the immediate write-off of new water infrastructure, uncapped. So irrigators who might be upgrading irrigation equipment, dams, storage et cetera can write that off almost immediately, uncapped.

I want to touch on one last issue before I wrap up, and that is the PaTH job program. This program, I think, will be very well received across my electorate of O'Connor. I do not know how many times I have been told by young people looking for work: 'I can't get a job because I've got no experience. But how do I get experience unless someone gives me a job?' The PaTH program will allow an internship for three months. It will allow an employer—one of those great small business people in my electorate—to take somebody on at no cost to the business. The employee will get a top-up of $100 on their normal job search payment. And, after three months, they can then move into full-time employment, with a subsidy from the government. That will give a lot of young people an opportunity to get that work experience and get into the workforce. Even if it only lasts nine months, they will then be able to go and apply for their next job, having had some work experience.

I want to wrap up by saying that I am proud to support the fantastic small businesses in my electorate. This government is recognising the hard work and enterprise of this vital sector of the economy, and I welcome these tax incentives that will give small businesses in my electorate reward for their hard work. I commend the bill to the House.

Mr DICK (Oxley) (17:01): It gives me pleasure to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Accelerated Depreciation For Small Business Entities) Bill 2017 today because, quite simply, it is the government supporting Labor policy that was first introduced by the member for Lilley, and, unlike the government, the Labor Party has been consistent in backing Australian small businesses, rather than flip-flopping around with this policy. We have heard speaker after speaker lecture everyone about their credentials around small business. When it comes to this policy, they have not been consistent; they have been inconsistent with small businesses in Australia.

I am proud to be someone who grew up in a family deeply invested in small business—someone who learnt from an early age the importance of running a payroll and of looking after workers in my father's small business. When he came out of the war, my father traded as a butcher and ran a number of butcher shops with his brother, Milton Dick Sr, and Dick Brothers Meats was an institution across Brisbane.

So I am very proud to say that I am from a family of small business—because far too often we hear, from that side of the chamber, untruths about where Labor sides as to business. Today I am going to put very clearly on the record, on behalf of the businesses in my electorate, that I back them 100 per cent. Small businesses need our support and they need policies which back them, because we know that, when Labor was in government, originally we recognised the value of an increased immediate deductibility threshold for small businesses and increased the threshold from $1,000 to $6,500, as part of a broad package of tax reforms contained in the Tax Laws Amendment (Stronger, Fairer, Simpler and Other Measures) Bill 2011.

This broad package was introduced and, as I said, lifted the threshold. I may add, for the record: it was opposed by those opposite. That bill was actually opposed. And I am going to place on the record today the name of the person who introduced this measure, which somehow the government wants to be patted on the back for, and somehow wants somehow to be congratulated on, despite the flip-flopping that we have seen. It was introduced by the member for Maribyrnong—who, at the time, was the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation—Bill Shorten, the Leader of the Opposition. In the speech, the leader said:

These changes improve cash flow for businesses and makes investing in and growing their business more achievable—

which is precisely what they did. The increased asset threshold was embraced by the small-business community across Australia, who saw tremendous value in this policy. But, despite the support shown at the time, and despite all the lectures that we have heard today, what did the government do when they came to power? They scrapped it. That is right—the government scrapped this measure. We know it was unfortunately part of the 2014 budget—that toxic 2014 budget that seems to live on and on throughout Australia and keeps coming back to haunt the government. I believe that the inconsistency we have seen from the government has continued on from that moment.

So rather than supporting small businesses with the competence those opposite like to talk about, the Liberal-National government tore up the increased threshold and scrapped it. I may add that members on this side of the House opposed them every step of the way. Then, like they always do, the government performed a U-turn when the Abbott government reversed its position the following year and proposed a temporary two-year increase in the deductibility threshold to $20,000 in the 2015-16 budget. Of course, this side of the House was happy to support that. But so much for providing the confidence and business confidence we hear about in lectures from members of the government today.

It is a little galling to hear the government wanting to be congratulated for this measure when for the last four or five years they have not been consistent. In fact, we know business investment looks set to slide for a fifth consecutive year under this government, with total business investing falling to 2.1 per cent in the December quarter alone. That is more than double what was forecasted by economists. This includes plans for mining investment down 20 per cent and plans for manufacturing investment down 1.2 per cent over the past year. But we should not be surprised when we have an incompetent government like this, flip-flopping around on small business policy and trying to introduce measures which are simply supported by the Australian community.

Labor, on the other hand, recognise the importance of consistency for businesses, which is why we will support the bill today to extend by 12 months to June 2018 the period in which small businesses and small business entities can temporarily access expanded, accelerated depreciation rules. This extension is also supported by small business groups across Australia and the Australian Chamber of Commerce. The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, Kate Carnell, said, 'a healthy small business sector is a prerequisite for a growing economy with high employment opportunities'. Of course, there are also a number of other key groups.

Labor recognises the importance of supporting the two million genuine Australian small businesses that represent 83 per cent of Australian companies. In my electorate there are 8,748 small businesses who provide thousands of jobs to local residents and inject millions of dollars into our local economy in the south-west of Brisbane. Quite simply, small business is the backbone of our local economy in the south-west of Brisbane. In my local area small businesses are supported strongly by some terrific chambers of commerce. The Centenary and Districts Chamber of Commerce and the Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce are two I am proud to work closely with. Led by presidents Steve Pollard and Neil Coupland, the chambers provide advocacy, support and particularly support for new members who join our growing local economy.

From the centenary suburbs of Jindalee and Mount Ommaney all the way to Australia's fastest-growing region, the Greater Springfield area, small businesses make a huge contribution by employing local young people, giving people their first job and also giving opportunities to people getting back into the workforce. Just a few short weeks ago I had the pleasure of visiting Little Tokyo Two, a hub for local start-ups in the Springfield area with the shadow minister for trade and investment, Jason Clare, where we saw firsthand the spirit of small businesses and the boundless opportunities that are finding their way through the Springfield corridor.

Small businesses contribute so much to our national prosperity, including providing a livelihood for millions of Australians. Whether they be sole traders, partnerships, trusts or small employers, they have helped underpin more than 25 years of Australian economic growth. Labor's commitment to supporting these small businesses is unwavering. Labor is proud to have led the debate in this policy area in recent years by offering practical policies to support Australia's industrious small-business sector. In 2016 Labor took a comprehensive suite of small-business policies to the federal election, including a responsible plan to cut company tax for small businesses with turnovers of less than $2 million, a plan to level the playing field for small businesses by ensuring that multinationals pay their fair share of tax, and a plan to help small businesses incorporate without additional red tape, along with a range of innovative policies to assist small businesses better access finance and help entrepreneurs start their own businesses.

Labor has continued to fight for small businesses in the 45th Parliament. We continue to develop and advocate for policies that will benefit Australian small businesses, helping them grow and prosper. In February of this year, Labor introduced into the Senate the Competition and Consumer Legislation Amendment (Small Business Access to Justice) Bill 2017. These access to justice reforms would help small businesses take cases of anticompetitive behaviour to court. Currently, small businesses are less likely to take up private litigation against anticompetitive behaviour. This is because big businesses have deep pockets, as we know, and armies of lawyers, which means the risk of small businesses being overwhelmed and having to pay the big businesses legal fees is a significant obstacle. Despite this, the government has refused to address this inequity in the face of the Productivity Commission and the government's own competition review saying that small businesses are disadvantaged in the court process. I am proud to see that Labor's bill will restore the balance by letting a small business request a no adverse cost order early in a court case. This will help level the playing field and encourage more small businesses to take on anticompetitive behaviour.

Labor has also announced a package of reforms to tackle illegal company phoenixing, as my friend and colleague the member for Macquarie was talking about in her contribution earlier today. As we know, this is a practice that often leaves a small businesses on the hook for unpaid debt that they are never able to recover. Labor will crack down on dodgy directors who engage in phoenix activity where they deliberately burn companies in an attempt to avoid their obligation to employees, government and honest businesses. The package will see employees and business owners benefit from new enforcement tools for the Australian Securities and Investment Commission, tightened laws protecting employee entitlements, and harsher penalties to deter and punish insidious phoenix activity. Currently in Australia, it is easier to be a company director than to open a bank account, yet the government has barely raised a peep about phoenix activity. Rather, the coalition has chosen to continue its narrow, ideological agenda. We know their priority is not looking after the little guy, not looking after the battler, and not even looking after the small-business operator. We know their agenda is—front and centre, first, second and third—delivering large multinational companies tax cuts. We know that is their agenda.

On this side of the chamber, we have a different view. Labor's new plan will require all company directors to obtain a unique director identification number with a 100 point identification check, increase penalties associated with phoenix activity, introduce an objective test for transactions depriving employees of their entitlements, clarify the availability of compensation orders against accessories, and consult on target integrity measures based on the recommendations of the Melbourne Law School and Monash Business School phoenix research team's recommendations. I acknowledge the good work and the hard work of our shadow minister, Andrew Leigh, in this area. Estimated in 2012 to cost up to $3.2 billion annually, fraudulent phoenix activity hurts employees, small businesses, subcontractors and, most importantly, families—families and small businesses right across Australia.

With respect to the instant write-off, it was the Labor Party that first identified the value for Australian businesses in increasing the immediate deductible threshold. We know, on this side of the chamber, it was Labor who increased that threshold for small businesses from $1,000 to $6,500. We know it was one of the poorest decisions under the Abbott-Turnbull government to junk this. So, whilst we hear a lot of platitudes from those opposite saying, 'We're the champions of small business,' look at what they have done, not what they say. Let's remember that one of the first actions they took on coming into government was to reduce that from $6½ thousand down to $1,000. We hear a lot from those opposite saying, 'Look, we support small business', but, when it comes to the record, in this particular policy area they are found to be wanting. I understand that the government then realised that this was a huge mistake, that they got it wrong. But the consistency is important, as I said in my opening remarks.

While we welcome the decision to extend the small business instant asset write-off, we note that this measure will cost the budget around $1 billion in 2018-19. We want to make sure that, with a large expense on the budget, the predicted economic benefits are being delivered, and we are going to call on the government to evaluate it and release the evaluation in full prior to any further extension. That is a measured response. That is a sensible response that the Australian community understands.

So there is no doubt of the enormous contribution that small business makes to Australia. Accounting for 33 per cent of Australia's GDP and employing 50 per cent of the workforce, small businesses really drive our economy. Labor, including me, as the local federal member for Oxley and Brisbane's south-west, will continue to support small businesses. We support this bill to extend the instant asset write-off to encourage small businesses to grow and prosper, to see those jobs of the future, particularly in the corridors that I represent—the high-growth corridors—to make sure that our young kids get jobs and that they continue in the future.

Mr LEESER (Berowra) (17:16): I am delighted to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Accelerated Depreciation For Small Business Entities) Bill 2017. The bill implements one of the great measures announced in the 2017 federal budget in recent weeks. It is a very important measure that will help small businesses right across the country, particularly in my electorate of Berowra. The bill extends by 12 months, to 30 June 2018, the period during which small business entities can expand their accelerated depreciation rules.

There are around 15,000 small businesses in my electorate of Berowra, and they employ tens of thousands of people. Berowra businesses know that they can spend their own money better than the taxman can. Those small businesses in my electorate of Berowra keep telling me that they want tax relief. They want tax relief so that they can invest more in their businesses. They want tax relief so that they can employ more people. They want tax relief so that they can turn their small businesses into bigger businesses that have glorious nationwide reputations.

This government has a strong record of backing small businesses, helping them grow and deliver more and better-paying jobs. We have done this by cutting small business taxes, reducing the corporate tax rate to 27½ per cent for small businesses that have a turnover of up to $10 million, and that takes effect from 1 July 2017. And we are going to further reduce that to 25 per cent by 2026-27. We are increasing the number of businesses that are eligible for a range of small business tax concessions by raising the small business entity turnover threshold from $2 million to $10 million. Only those opposite, in the Labor Party, believe that a business with slightly over $2 million turnover—that is turnover, not profit—is somehow a big business. We on this side of the House have a greater appreciation for small business. Many of us have run small businesses. Many of us come from small business families. Many of us are in electorates like mine where the small business community is the absolute backbone of the electorate: it is the small business people who get involved in the P&Cs; it is the small business people who get involved in the charitable organisations; it is the small business people who employ people and give them an opportunity.

Our party understands that the best thing governments can do for small businesses is to reduce the regulatory burden and get out of their way. The coalition government has maintained its focus on simplifying small business paperwork and has committed to cutting red tape costs by $1 billion every year since we were elected. Our party has reduced the annual regulatory burden on small business and the community by more than $5.8 billion since coming to government. That exceeds our target every single year. And we are continuing to reduce the complexity and cost of complying with regulation. The National Business Simplification Initiative will tackle the burden of unnecessary regulation, particularly where there is duplication across the different levels of government—federal, state and local. It will improve access to government information and services for businesses by providing them in one place and with streamlined service delivery. We are developing a simplified business activity statement solution to save small businesses time and money on bookkeeping and reporting. These changes will allow small business owners to spend less time reporting to government and less time on their paperwork, and more time growing their business and with their families.

Let me talk a little bit about the instant asset write-off contained in this bill. Through accelerated depreciation, the 2017 federal budget delivers additional support to the nearly 3.2 million small businesses across Australia. All businesses can claim the cost of most depreciating assets if they are used for work purposes. The instant asset write-off measure allows small business with a turnover of up to $10 million to claim an instant deduction on capital equipment with a value up to $20,000. Prior to 12 May 2015, the immediate write off was only $1,000 for any asset purchased. If the asset was over the $1,000 cap, it would be depreciated over a set period or pooled in a small asset pool. This meant it could take up to 10 to 15 years to obtain the benefit for any large asset purchase. This measure was due to finish on 30 June 2017, before its extension in the 2017-18 federal budget. Small- and medium-sized businesses will now have more certainty that they will be able to immediately deduct the purchase of these assets first used or ready to be used by 30 June 2017 and 30 June 2018.

Additionally, assets that cost more than $20,000 and costs of $20,000 or more relating to depreciating assets can be allocated to a small business's general small business pool and deducted at a specific rate for the depletion of the pool. The rate of deduction is 15 per cent in the year they are allocated and 30 per cent in subsequent years. If the balance of the small business' pool is less than $20,000 at the end of the income year, the business can claim a deduction for the entire balance of the pool. As the pool depreciates all assets in the same way, small businesses do not need spend valuable time tracking each individual asset against different depreciation rates over time. The extension of the instant asset write-off will improve cash flow for small business. This will boost productivity and help small-business owners reinvest in their business. Improved cash flow will also give businesses the flexibility to hire more employees and pay staff more. It will also encourage small businesses to bring forward capital investment from future years to the current income year, renewing their capital base. That is something we so often see business generally in Australia underinvesting in.

This bill is a great boom for Berowra businesses. For example, hairdressers in Berowra could claim deductions on new flooring or equipment in their hairdressing salons. Take Real Men's Hairdressing—a great name—in Pennant Hills and its owner and operator, Aman Hamid. This is an example of a great Berowra small business in my electorate that stands to benefit from this measure. If you want to see how good he is, you only need to look at my haircut, because this is the place I get my hair cut. They will be celebrating their third year of operations in June this year and they will benefit by being able to depreciate the clippers that they use every time to shear my head.

It is not just hairdressers that will benefit from this; tutoring business can benefit from instant deductions. For instance, they could deduct an interactive whiteboard, as so many more of our tutoring businesses are using. I want to talk to you about one of the great businesses in my electorate that does tutoring. Sponge Education is a business started by a remarkable 26-year-old woman, Sarah Carmen. She had an idea for a tutoring business—having had her own experience of the HSC and having done a science degree at university—realising that part of the success of tutoring was not just the technical tutoring but also looking after the mental health of those students who are under the pressure of doing HSC. Sarah Carmen has now taken this business to employing 50 tutors and providing services to 200 students across my electorate. She tutors in maths, English, science, geography, history and music, and I think her business is so important because of her understanding of the important mental health aspect. If a student has good mental health, they will do well at school. I look forward to seeing the way that Sarah will use the instant asset write-off to help her business.

This is a great boom for architecture firms. Great architecture companies like Stanton Dahl, which was started by the great Phil Stanton back in the 1980s, a resident of Pennant Hills in my electorate. He is a person who has designed and built so many of our community's institutions, from churches and school halls to aged-care facilities, automotive businesses and homes for people. He has been in practice for over 30 years. It is a really extraordinary business. He and his firm can claim deductions on new drafting tables and equipment, for instance. I spoke recently to Geoff Lloyd of Hardwood Mills Australia in Hornsby, which provides small portable sawmills in my electorate. He said to me that he saw huge benefit in the instant asset write-off. He said many businesses lost a lot of confidence during the global financial crisis, and having this measure promotes confidence in the community that businesses can make decisions and buy assets and invest in their businesses with greater certainty. He said: 'This supports our business. I think it is great and it should stay. We agonise over every spending decision. I have bought many assets for our business, because of the asset write-off, that we would not have otherwise.' He also outlined that, when small businesses purchase more or better assets locally, communities and other businesses directly also benefit from a flow-on effect of the purchases. Hardwood Mills recently installed a crane on one of their trucks. Geoff Lloyd explained that he does not have a licence to install the crane, so, in addition to the purchase itself, Hardwood Mills hired a business to install it. This shows the clear flow-on effect in stimulating our economy, increasing investment, growing businesses and creating more jobs. This is a purchase they would not have made without the asset write-off of $20,000.

As the son of an accountant, I know how important accountants are in helping small businesses; and I know that accountants, more than anyone else, know the health of our economy and the health of small businesses. Accountants are not just there to do tax; a good accountant advises you how to build and grow your business. And so I talked to a couple of accountants in my electorate to find out what they thought of these particular measures. I talked to Craig Lawton, an accountant from Glenorie in my electorate. Craig said: 'This policy is really useful for many small businesses and I hope it carries on. It has got a very strong endorsement in the accounting community.' Pedro Sasso, the director of Shuriken Consulting at Hornsby, another one of our great accounting firms and a small business as well, said: 'The higher up-front deduction will allow small businesses to lower their tax bill. In a low-growth environment the immediate write-off incentive allows small businesses to purchase assets with the immediate write-off helping to stimulate a growth. Not only does the immediate write-off benefit existing businesses, but it also benefits start-ups and innovation companies as it increases deductions and helps to lower tax to be paid, allowing greater funds available for business growth. This will allow an increased chance for these start-ups to succeed in business.'

So we have great practical endorsement from a range of Berowra businesses, Berowra accountants and small businesses more broadly. This is a very important measure to allow businesses to invest in their business and to do so more quickly. It stimulates not only the growth of that small business but the broader economy around it. It is a really terrific proposal and I am delighted to be here to speak on it today.

And what have those opposite had to say whenever we talk about small business? I think they see small business as not that important. The Labor Party almost see small business as part of a class war. They have constantly had a go at the small business tax deduction that we gave earlier in the year because they think a business with a turnover of $2 million or more is a large business. Well, as most of the businesses in Berowra, which have turnovers a little bit larger than that, can tell you, they are not large businesses. A $2 million turnover makes you a microbusiness. We need governments to understand the position that small business is in, we need governments to support small businesses, we need governments to be in a position to understand that small businesses are better to deal with their own money themselves. Small businesses know how their businesses run and we should give them the incentive to invest now and to grow their business. That is what this particular measure does. That is why I am delighted to support the Treasury Laws Amendment (Accelerated Depreciation for Small Business Entities) Bill 2017 and I commend its passage to the House.

Mr PERRETT (Moreton—Opposition Whip) (17:29): I rise to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Accelerated Depreciation For Small Business Entities) Bill 2017, which for convenience I will call the TLAB. Obviously Labor support this bill—of course we would. It is basically our bill. There is only cheap politics involved in the coalition playing ducks and drakes with this sector in the first place. This bill extends until 30 June 2018 the period in which small business entities can temporarily access expanded accelerated depreciation rules.

I know that small businesses make an enormous contribution to the Australian economy. There are around 18,000 to 19,000 small businesses in Moreton. I see the great work that they do and how much of a struggle it is and how much sweat so many people have often invested in setting up a small business, and I know the heartache that can come with a small business going belly up. Sadly, nearly a third of them do that. In my time as a lawyer I worked in commercial law. In fact, I still see some of the buildings that have leases that I helped draft as a young lawyer. So I know how hard and how difficult it is to start a small business, with all the associated red tape. And Labor understand that—I saw that in our time in government from 2007 through to 2013. I know the valuable contribution that the thousands of businesses in my electorate of Moreton make—the sole traders, the partnerships, the small employers. They keep the economy ticking over and employ numerous people.

Labor has led the debate in this policy area. In fact, I remind those opposite that Labor introduced the instant asset write-off. I say that again, because from the speeches preceding mine you would think that this is a coalition initiative, but it was the Labor government that introduced the instant asset write-off. When in government in 2012, Labor increased the threshold for small businesses from $1,000 to $6,500. The coalition government, on the other hand, wound back that very successful Labor initiative in its horror 2014-15 budget, again reducing the threshold to $1,000. So, for all of the platitudes and the narrative put forward by those opposite, I need to remind them that those of them elected at the 2013 election got rid of Labor's increased threshold of $6,500 for small business and the opportunities that came with that increased threshold. In what is becoming a trademark of the coalition government, just 12 months later they reinstated the instant asset write-off and extended it to $20,000.

Labor welcomes this extension of the $20,000 threshold for instant asset write-offs until 30 June 2018. However, at a cost of $1 billion in 2018-19, I know that this measure should be evaluated to ensure it is delivering the predicted economic benefits and that people are taking advantage of stimulating the economy. I call on the government to prudently evaluate this measure and release that evaluation before there is a further extension. If the benefits are there, obviously Labor will support such policies.

We do understand small business. As I said, I have worked as a lawyer with clients who were small businesses. We know that the Labor Party has produced practical policies that will nurture small businesses and help them thrive. At the last election one year ago we had plans that included a responsible plan to cut company tax for small businesses with a turnover of less than $2 million, a plan to level the playing field for small businesses by ensuring that multinationals pay their fair share of tax, a plan to help small businesses incorporate without additional red tape, along with a range of other innovative policies to assist small businesses to better access finance and help entrepreneurs start their own businesses—something that Australia does not do as well as we should. Labor is still working with small businesses across the country, listening to their needs and developing policies that will benefit them.

This year, Labor introduced into the Senate a bill to help small businesses take cases of anticompetitive behaviour to court. The Competition and Consumer Legislation Amendment (Small Business Access to Justice) Bill 2017 would level the playing field so that small businesses who challenge a large business for anticompetitive behaviour would not risk having to pay the often very large legal fees of the large business if they lost. Remember that competitive behaviour is what best benefits the Australian public. The prospects of a costs order sadly often deter small businesses from making a claim of anticompetitive behaviour against the top end of town. Small businesses could request a no adverse costs order early in the court case, giving them the confidence to pursue their claim. I am hopeful that the government, the self-proclaimed champions of small business, will support the Labor legislation.

The member for Fenner has also recently announced a package of reforms to crack down on phoenixing. Labor believes that we need stronger laws to make sure that directors cannot simply strip the assets out of a company and then set up a new one, often to the detriment of employees and creditors. Illegal phoenixing activity costs the economy billions of dollars annually. I know that it can be legitimate, that companies do make bad decisions or markets change and people want to start again. There is no problem with legitimate businesses failing and then trying again—that is not a bad thing at all. But illegal phoenixing is what this legislation is about.

Among the measures announced by Labor are requiring all company directors to obtain a unique director identification number with a 100-point identification check, so we would know if people are repeatedly doing this; increasing penalties associated with phoenix activity; introducing an objective test for transactions depriving employees of their entitlements; clarifying the availability of compensations orders against accessories; and consulting on targeted integrity measures based on the recommendations of the Melbourne Law School and Monash Business School phoenix research team recommendations. As one expert said recently, under current laws it is almost possible to register your dog as a company director. Currently, setting up a bank account requires a much more rigorous process than becoming a company director. At Senate estimates this week, the tax commissioner noted that in other countries proper identification checks are required for anyone wanting to become a director. We need to have the same rigour applied to prospective Australian company directors.

Small business owners know that rising energy prices are having a devastating impact on small businesses right across Australia. Rising energy prices are the result of the failure of the Turnbull government to put in place an emissions intensity scheme. Just this week the energy minister has again confirmed that the Turnbull government will not be imposing an emissions intensity scheme on the power sector. An EIS would send a positive signal to investors encouraging them to renew our ageing electricity infrastructure. An emissions intensity scheme is supported by experts, industry and the states. It will cut electricity costs by up to $15 billion and will support new investment. But what do we get from the Turnbull government, after four years? We have, horrifically and horribly for business, wholesale electricity prices that have doubled since the member for Warringah became Prime Minister. Try as they might to duck and weave, the Turnbull government is ultimately responsible for these price hikes and costs for small business.

Another topic associated with small business is the NBN. The Turnbull 2017 budget has brought no joy to businesses still waiting for the rollout of this second rate NBN. The member for Wentworth promised in 2013 that the Liberals would deliver the NBN to everyone by 2016, but it will still be years before businesses in my electorate of Morton are hooked up to this second rate NBN. In 2013, during that election campaign, businesses on the south side expressed concern that a change of government would delay the rollout of the NBN. It was actually the number one topic at the business forum organised by the local Quest papers. The local media said in an article that business owners in Rocklea, in my electorate, were worried about this possible delay. They were right to be concerned, despite the assurances given by the LNP candidate. The NBN company's website shows that the rollout of the NBN has not even started in Rocklea yet, and will not start until next year at the earliest.

In 2013 I had no idea how badly the member for Wentworth could wreck the NBN. That is what he was asked to do by the member for Warringah, and he did it. In the two years that the member for Wentworth, our now Prime Minister, was communications minister he did not connect a single paying customer to his second rate fibre-to-the-node network. Where his second rate network has now been switched on, sadly it is not working properly. The member for Wentworth's management of his NBN as communications minister and now as Prime Minister, where the buck stops, has been an absolute disaster. Because of the Prime Minister's dastardly deeds, the productivity gains and business opportunities that would have flowed have not eventuated.

I have been contacted by people all over my electorate who tell me how disappointed they are and tell me about the business opportunities they have missed out on. The NBN is behind schedule, over budget and not designed to meet the future needs of Australian businesses. Businesses need access to high-speed internet to compete in a highly competitive global market. In my electorate, being particularly multicultural, many people have business connections with the rest of the world, and they would benefit from an NBN but instead we get a rollout that is slow and speeds that are even slower. The 2017 budget has not provided any solution to this crucial problem, which is preventing businesses from growing and selling their products and services around the world, particularly in South-East Asia. Small businesses will continue to struggle with one of the slowest and most expensive internet services in the developed world. When medals are handed out for being connected, Australia is not even in the stadium. We are going further and further back while governments in other countries have been forward-thinking enough to invest in the digital revolution. The member for Wentworth's failures are bad for productivity, they are bad for our economy and they are bad for businesses—and dare I say, as someone who comes from country Queensland, there has been a betrayal of the bush as well. That is where the great opportunities lie. Agricultural producers could be hooked up with markets around the world, particularly with that expanding middle class in China, India and the like, and our near neighbours.

Labor supports the measures in this bill because Labor supports small businesses. We do not just say we do—we have shown our support while in office. The Turnbull government have looked up at the top end of town in their 2017 budget but they have failed to address the real concerns of small businesses. They have been so focused on delivering an uncosted $65 billion tax giveaway for big businesses that they have forgotten small businesses. They have failed to address rising energy prices and the fact that they impact on businesses all over Australia. As I have pointed out, prices have doubled under the coalition government. They are about to start their fifth year of government, and prices have doubled. I was in the 42nd and the 43rd parliaments, and I heard promise after promise about a sensible price on carbon and what would eventuate, and instead we have seen a complete betrayal of those utterances.

The payment terms problem exposed in the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman's recent report has not been addressed by this government. Obviously a most pressing issue, the one raised more often with my office than almost anything else, is that small businesses, when they go to set up, do not have access to high-speed internet. Moreton is in the southern suburbs of Brisbane—not out the back of Burke—but we are still not getting the benefits of the National Broadband Network that the then shadow communications minister promised would come. It has been a great betrayal, and a great productivity gain has been missed. The 2017 budget was a missed opportunity in so many of these areas, and sadly that has impacted on small businesses. The small businesses of Australia do the heavy lifting when it comes to employing, when it comes to taking risk and when it comes to participating in their local communities, and small businesses deserve better. I wondered where the rot set in, and I can see that it was perhaps when they got rid of Bruce Billson from the cabinet table—someone who was a champion for small business. We had a new Prime Minister come in and he got rid of Bruce. Bring him back. (Time expired)

Ms LANDRY (Capricornia—Deputy Nationals Whip) (17:44): Time and time again we hear of the need to cut red tape to make it easier for small business. Thanks to the coalition government, action is catching up with the rhetoric. The government's efforts to support small business are being felt across the nation. I applaud the Minister for Small Business for making a real difference to the businesses of Capricornia.

Throughout Capricornia, small businesses have been suffering, with continued delays in new mining approvals and a lack of support for major new infrastructure projects from the Labor state government. But in the resilient spirit that is Central Queensland, small businesses persevere. Running a small business is tough in an ever-evolving economic landscape. I think back to the days when my own parents ran Lucky Daniel News & Casket Agency in Rockhampton. It was hard enough then to make a decent income—so much so that, on occasion, I would have to step in and help out when my mother would go to work the night shift as a nurse. As hard as it was then, my parents did not have to navigate the complex system we simplistically label as 'red tape'. They did not have to worry about BAS statements. They did not need to worry about social media strategies and ensuring their business had an appropriate digital presence. They did not have to worry about competition from online suppliers and competition from major internationals. They did not have to worry about how they were going to pay staff members double time and a half and still be able to feed their family at the end of the day. Running a small business today is just that—running. It is running from union pillar to taxation post and back again, via digital trenches and gutters of compliance.

The steps the coalition government is taking have real and measurable outcomes. An immediate business tax deduction of $20,000 for purchasing assets can make a big difference. It is the difference between buying the computer that will allow them to better manage their online presence. It is the difference between being able to afford opening on a Sunday in the hope of countering losses from 24/7 online competitors. Extending the instant asset write-off program is the highlight of the budget for small business. The measure has proved to be one of the most popular government small business incentives. It encourages Australia's 3.2 million small businesses to invest in their business. Based on current lodgements of the 2015-16 tax returns, as at the beginning of May 2017, around 220,000 business have reported that they have utilised the IAWO. That is around $1.9 billion in deductions for the 2015-16 financial year. This number is expected to increase as more businesses lodge their income tax returns.

What does this mean for small businesses in Capricornia? It was just last week that Minister Fiona Nash and I walked through the main street of Rockhampton. We visited Stewarts, a department store operating since 1862. Bruce Woods praised the efforts of the coalition government and the efforts to support small business. When Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was in town two weeks ago, we were fortunate to visit a number of new small businesses, including Dingles Cafe & Bar and Headricks Lane. Both of these businesses have shown confidence in the measures being made and confidence that the measures will push the economy in the right direction.

The instant asset write-off will improve cash flow for small-business, providing a boost in productivity and helping small-business owners to reinvest in their business. Improved cash flow will also give businesses the flexibility to hire more employees and pay staff more. When small businesses purchase more or buy assets locally, the community and other businesses directly benefit from the flow-on effect of that purchase. They have that little bit of extra cash to support the local hockey team or to take on a new apprentice.

What we are hearing is that small businesses around Australia feel energised by the small-business measures in our budget. We are hearing that it has given them the confidence to carefully invest in growing their business. Rockhampton chartered accountant Ms Sarah Becker, from James Becker & Co, has said that the $20,000 immediate tax deduction for small business purchases is being taken up by a number of her clients in order to get their businesses up to date and ready for increased future capacity. Mr Chris Harris from CT Harris & Co, who is also in Rockhampton, has applauded the small-business tax package. He explained that many of his clients have already take up the $20,000 immediate tax deduction by bringing forward the acquisition of items that were previously only on the wish list. These small businesses will use the purchase of assets to generate income and boost struggling regional economies. By allowing small businesses to purchase both old and new items, the continuation of this package is boosting not just the market for new products but the second-hand market, which benefits even more small businesses. Mr Harris has said that this ensures there will not be a negative effect on the second-hand market and has commended the government for this foresight.

Every dollar spent in a small business is an injection of confidence into that business and the local community. Small businesses and industry groups have been vocal in their calls for an extension to the program. This has been well received by small business stakeholders following the budget.

The extension of the package has also been welcomed by rural communities. Ken McCaffrey, a well-known livestock agent in Queensland, was saying that he has been talking to a number of property owners. Overall, he says, the fact that farmers can deduct the cost of water facilities and fencing in the year that they are purchased and deduct the cost of fodder storage assets over three years has meant a boost not just for those farmers themselves but also for related businesses in rural communities that will be supplying the fencing materials and other equipment required.

Capricornia is home to 12,927 registered small businesses. The instant asset write-off supports businesses to reinvest in the local economy. For example, if Olive Catering wants to expand its operations and purchase a mobile kitchen or buy a new coffee machine, they can take advantage of the generous incentive. Design+Architecture may need a new drafting table so that they can better prepare designs to bid for the Mount Archer redevelopment; they can now write that off, too.

The figures speak for themselves. As at 4 April 2017, with 60 per cent of the 2015-16 returns counted, over 200,000 claims have been made. This is an increase from 153,000 in 2014-15 and 117,000 in 2013-14. The average claim size in 2015-16 was $8,547.

Finally, I would like to touch on the importance of the depreciation deduction. Allowing pooling for assets costing more than the $20,000 threshold will allow for longer-term financial planning and cash flow. The pooling arrangements are available to small businesses to provide greater simplicity for their tax affairs. As the pool depreciates all assets in the same way, small businesses do not need to spend valuable time tracking each individual asset against different depreciation rates over the time.

Almost Anything, a web and graphic design business in North Rockhampton, is a perfect example. Almost Anything have a high turnover, but the profits are marginal. They can now benefit from an increase in turnover to $10 million. They can purchase a new printer so that they can perform die-cut printing services and better compete with online companies. The printer costs over $50,000, which is above the threshold, so they are not able to claim an immediate deduction. However, Almost Anything can depreciate the asset through their general small business pool. If the value of the pool falls below $20,000, the entire pool balance can be immediately deducted in that income year, providing an additional cash flow benefit. Because the business is not limited to just one purchase, and thanks to the forward cash flow, they can also purchase branded vehicles for staff, to help promote their business. It falls under the $20,000 threshold, so they are able to write it off instantly.

The extension of this budget measure will build on the tremendous success already achieved. The measure has proved to be one of the most popular government small business incentives, and encourages Australia's 3.2 million small businesses to invest in their business. A strong small business sector means more jobs for Australians and more opportunities to build vibrant local economies across the country. Small business is the backbone of our economy and the backbone of Capricornia. Most small businesses do not have a team of accountants, ongoing administration support or marketing departments; they do the work themselves, and they have to continually navigate an increasingly complex business world. Every new compliance requirement and government regulation means less time to focus on growing their business and employing more people. This continues the government's strong record of backing small business to grow and deliver more and better-paying jobs by helping them replace or upgrade their machinery and equipment.

By continuing to reduce red tape the coalition government is proving its commitment to the working class. Making business easier for Australians will deliver more for everyday families than what union-driven compliance will ever achieve. Thank you, Minister, for your work to support the small businesses of Capricornia.

Dr MIKE KELLY (Eden-Monaro) (17:55): This is just another area where we see the same policy drift and clueless approach from this government, not only their approach to economic issues but their approach to just about every aspect over the four years of chaos of this government. They have flopped about like a flathead in a tinnie. Really, if we are talking about 'vibble bobble' we have seen so much on this side that it just defies belief. Will they ever achieve some kind of policy coherence?

Here is an area where I can at least congratulate them for having adopted a Labor policy. When we talk about benefiting small business and what will actually mean something on the ground to small businesses, Labor's policy of loss carry-back and instant asset write-off is something that meant something to every small business in Australia. Whereas, if we talk about the government's tax reform proposals, it just does not actually achieve anywhere near that kind of impact to small businesses. If you look at Eden-Monaro as an example, I have around 5,000 small businesses in my region and there are only a handful of them that are actually incorporated that would even 'benefit' in from this 'tax relief'.

So, effectively, this does nothing for the vast majority of small businesses in Australia, and that is the first essential point that we should communicate here. Those sole traders and those partnerships do not get any benefit out of the tax reforms or tax cuts that the government is proposing. But, yes, instant asset write-offs and loss carry-back really help. But when we talk about the record of this government on assisting small businesses in this country, we have seen a record of devastation. The car industry has collapsed; a couple of hundred jobs are going there. We have seen what they have done in naval shipbuilding. I have talked about this in a couple of speeches already. Labor built the shipbuilding workforce up to over 4,000 in this country and we had a program ahead of us of building supply vessels and going into rolling shipbuilding that would have grown that workforce even further. Instead, what we have seen is over 3,000 jobs lost in that space. We have seen the great shipyards of Newcastle and Williamstown, which were playing such a vital role in that plan, now rotting on the vine.

To really reinforce this downward spiral that has been created these last four years, there was been the massive casualisation of our workforce. Permanent jobs are just a dim, dark, distant memory from this government's way of dealing with the economy. Really, when they talk about creating these tax deductions and the effect that this will create and the trickle down tradition, we know it will not happen. It has never happened before and it has never worked before. If it was going to happen with the record profits we are seeing in some sectors now, it would be reflected now, we would be seeing it now. Instead, what we are seeing is record low wages growth. So it is just a complete myth that that will happen.

They talk about encouraging investment. All we know that will happen with this $65 billion tax giveaway is that all of that money—or the vast bulk of it—is going to go overseas. We will see very little of that benefit come here. When you take into account all the benefits that are already here in our imputation regime, there really is no impact that is going to be felt here in relation to those massive tax giveaways to those big overseas companies. If you wanted investment, what you would have done is continue Labor's Clean Energy Future framework, because that was encouraging massive investment in the renewable energy industry, one of those growth industries that we could have been playing such a vital role in. We could have been getting the benefit of being at the ground floor of so much developing technology in that area and marketing it to the world. Instead, we saw reports like Bloomberg's report, which was evident in reporting in 2015, saying that investment in large-scale renewable energy had fallen by 90 per cent in 12 months. My region was one of the regions to suffer the most from that fall-off. In the period when I was the member from 2007 to 2013 we had over $1 billion in investment in just renewable energy projects coming into just Eden-Monaro. We managed to negotiate to get wind farm components brought in through the port of Eden, which created local jobs for our stevedoring company there. We had the trucks stopping in towns like Bombala, putting money into the town and all the small businesses, with the retail and hospitality sector gaining from that, particularly through the successful Boco Rock project. That had a phase 2: there was a wave energy project; there were all sorts of projects that we were going to see come from the flow in investment that would have happened from maintaining that policy framework. All of it disappeared. We have seen some kicking to life of investment through what the states and territories, the ACT, has done in this space, but effectively now we are moving into another phase where uncertainty is killing off any further flow of investment. This is an area where we could have seen investment flowing, but it has not. It has been killed off by the coalition.

Then you look at the other side of that story, the impact of climate change, which the government is doing nothing about, and the impact on it on small businesses. I am not just talking about farmers and those who depend for their livelihoods on some of the more open environmental business enterprises. It also affects cafes and small businesses in Queanbeyan. During the last massive heatwave we saw cafes like Hotch Potch and many small businesses around Queanbeyan completely shut down because all their vital machinery, their refrigeration and the rest of it, broke down. A small business like Hotch Potch was not in a good position to be able to replace that machinery. Obviously you can talk about storm damage as well and the effect that that is having on many small businesses.

They are ignoring all these issues and impacts—what would encourage investment, what would take away serious effects on small businesses—at the same time as trying to make this huge tax giveaway, which is not going to achieve jobs and growth in Australia. In fact, they are looking at completely the wrong policy settings to achieve that. There have been so many reports and commentaries by economists on the fact that this tax cut will not achieve jobs and growth. One example from the MacroBusiness website from February this year stressed that there was no evidence at all to support the notion that this would create jobs and growth, if you actually were aware of what is going on in the world in terms of where jobs are created and where industry is going to grow. They said:

An alternative approach, which would be much more likely to have positive effects on employment, investment and innovation, would be to tax new companies at a lower rate. OECD research shows that young businesses are the primary drivers of job creation. And new companies are more likely to be at the frontier of productivity growth … Confining preferential tax breaks to new businesses – for example, by prescribing that a lower tax rate is only available to a business for the first (say) three years after its incorporation – focuses the assistance on those businesses which are actually likely to innovate, and to create jobs.

Effectively this government has lost the plot on focusing on putting policy settings in place to create start-ups, support start-ups, support innovation and to support new businesses. That is where the job growth in Australia will come from, not from this flawed tax proposal by the government.

You also need to look at how we can properly commercialise research and development, look at our tertiary institutions and how they relate to business, how we commercialise and market the research and development from the tertiary sectors, and how we develop a proper venture capital industry in this country. We have seen no policy initiatives from this government that have addressed that really critical issue. It is a great shame for this country not to have the sort of mature venture capital industry that really is essential in this day and age, when you have $2 trillion sloshing around in our managed funds not working hard enough to get behind new businesses. We need policy settings that achieve that.

An example of the sort of possibilities in this start-ups space, and particularly in rural and regional Australia, where we are not really taking advantage of the human resource that is out there or enabling them to take the ride on these new economies that is possible with good information infrastructure and good skills and training—an example is the Birdsnest business in Cooma, south of Canberra.

Jane Cay managed to wander off from the farm—she is married to one of the local farmers there—into town, bought a shop and started a business. Now her business occupies an entire block in Cooma. She is employing 110 local women. It is a very creative workplace environment with incredibly flexible work hours so the women can get their kids to school and do what they need to do on the farm. Now I think that company is in the top seven online companies in Australia. It is enormously successful, underpinned by communications infrastructure that she has there in Cooma.

Of course that can be amplified much more widely with a greater spread of successful NBN technology, which we know this government has made an absolute mess out of. I had an NBN forum in Queanbeyan last week. Over 100 people came in just from the near surrounds of Queanbeyan—

Mr Champion: I heard it was very cold.

Dr MIKE KELLY: It was cold but they were fired up, so it was quite warm in that building! They were outraged at what has been going on—and the attempts by this government to save money by putting more people onto satellite than were ever intended. It is holding back so many people in their small business operations. They are just outraged at the impediments to their development that have been created by the flawed NBN approach by this government.

What we need is a much more imaginative approach. I must also refer to the government's attacks on penalty rates in this context, because we are now coming very close to the situation where those penalty rate cuts will take effect on 1 July. This is absolutely critical to rural and regional Australia. We know that the McKell Institute's analysis shows that workers in rural Australia will be losing between $370 million to $691 million a year through the partial abolition of penalty rates in the retail and hospitality sectors. We are going to lose disposable income of between $174 million and $343 million in rural and regional Australia through this measure.

This is the big economic impediment right now. This is the thing that is the weak link in the government's own budget—wages. There is not enough money circulating in this economy to drive small business and to drive growth. It is this government's contractionary policies, through things like penalty rate cuts and through advocating at the Fair Work Commission for no rise to the minimum wage, that are really hurting our economy.

In New South Wales that penalty rate situation means that we are going to be losing somewhere between $118 million to $220 million, with a loss of disposable income of between $53 million and $106 million. In my local Monaro economy alone we will lose $16 million. This is going to have a serious impact on small businesses, and that is where they need the help. Consumer volume is the single biggest issue for a small business, which wants to have that going through the door.

I also want to talk a little about the impacts on broader small businesses of the approach to the defence industry by this government. We have seen, as I mentioned, the shock that has been created in the shipbuilding yards. We have seen small businesses, like Taylor Brothers in Tasmania and J&H Williams in Adelaide, who make the ducting for these vessels, have a drop-off in work created by not building the supply vessels here and continuing the Future Frigates. This has caused tremendous to disruption to so many small businesses around the country.

In the process of Land 400 we are also seeing small businesses like Elphinstone in Tasmania, which does a great job in bending metal, being ignored in that. Across the border here, in Queanbeyan, EOS does world-class remote weapons station technology. They were not even allowed to compete in the Land 400 process. We have the US Marines in Singapore and all these other countries looking at their technology, but their own country slammed the door in their face. There is no proactive marrying up of Australian SMEs with the primes in any of these projects. And by cutting and destroying what capacity we had within the DMO and by cutting the programs Labor had, we just are not seeing that proactivity in growing Australian businesses in our defence procurement processes.

And we have seen, for example, the killing of the Skilling Australia's Defence Industry program, SADI. It has gone; it went last year. We had 2,600 apprentices supported through SADI. Every aspect of the employment chain was supported through that program. There was the Defence Future Capability Technology Centre, which spawned the Defence Materials Technology Centre; the Australian Industry Capability Program that we started; the Defence Export Unit helped those companies to export; and the Global Supply Chain Program was really the key forward for a lot of our businesses. We may not be making whole units of products; the key now is to get into global supply chains with componentry. That would have been the future for the car industry if we had really seen some imagination from this government in that respect to save it. The Defence Industry Innovation Centre, and all of these programs, including a Priority Industry Capability Innovation Program and a Priority Industry Capability Development Fund, were helping Australian businesses. We need to get this country on track, to exploit the potential of the new economies, to grow the jobs of the future and to then make sure it is supported by the infrastructure that will deliver those skills—not cuts to universities and not smashing up the TAFEs. We need this government to really look at what supports small business.

Mr HOGAN (Page) (18:10): It is never more interesting than to hear a Labor MP talk about small business, because it highlights their lack of understanding and, indeed, a great dichotomy that has occurred in Australian politics in recent times. As you would well know, Deputy Speaker Georganas, there has been a general belief on both sides of politics now for three decades about the importance of small businesses and making them competitive, because both sides of politics, up until now, have realised that every single taxpayer dollar that we need for health, every single taxpayer dollar that we need for education, every single taxpayer dollar that we need for welfare, every single taxpayer dollar that we need for defence, or any other thing that the Australian federal government needs to spend money on, comes from the private sector.

From the ramblings of the other side, you would believe that the more you tax them the better, because we are going to get more money out of them. That has not been a belief on both sides of politics for about 30 years, because what Bob Hawke and Paul Keating realised was that we needed a competitive and vibrant private sector, and it began with them. It began with the Labor Party who cut taxes not just for small business but for all businesses, including big business. Why did they do that? They did that because they knew that we needed to have a competitive tax structure that made us competitive with other countries throughout the world, because we cannot take our bat and go home—we are playing in a global economy and all our industries need to be competitive on the global scale. So Hawke and Keating cut taxes. They knew that was the way you had to go, and they did it. And they did not just cut them— they slashed them. It continued under the Howard-Costello governments, where we continued to move tax rates for companies and small businesses down.

If you were to believe the Labor Party right now, you would say 'What happened? We started getting less money, did we, in corporate and company tax collections?' No, that is not what happened. Because when you lower tax rates it encourages small businesses to develop, it encourages the cash flow of small businesses, and it encourages more businesses to establish and come here. What happens has been statistically proven by the ABS—and I wish I had brought the figures in. I will talk about the accelerated depreciation for small business in a minute, but I did not know I was going to talk about company tax rates. I feel as though I need to, though, given the dismal contribution from the previous member. What happens—every time we have done that since the 1980s—is this: when you cut company tax rates ,within two or three years—guess what?—you are collecting more money. You are collecting more money from companies than you did previously. That is not only because the economy is growing. It actually improves and is bigger—the actual tax collection as a percentage of the total size of the economy increases.

That was believed by everybody until populist Bill Shorten arrived as opposition leader and felt he needed to oppose small business and company tax rates. This is going to put us in a perilous position if we do not keep up. Deputy Speaker, I am sure you are aware that Britain's company tax rate is below 20 per cent, the US has proposals to drastically reduce their company tax rates, and within the OECD, which is not competitive by a world standard, we are near the top of the list. I think we are about sixth or seventh in the level of our tax rates. If you were to look more widely around the world, especially within our region, we are even more uncompetitive with our tax rates. The good member who just spoke talked about start-ups. I tell you what: when you have the choice, as a start-up, of opening up in Australia with high tax rates or going to a country close by with a lower tax rate, guess what? You do not go to the higher tax rate. He can talk about start-ups all he likes; if we do not have a competitive structure that is ongoing—if it is just for a few years—they will not do it.

I leave this part of my contribution on tax rates to say—and we say it all the time, but I say it for the benefit of the other side of politics—unfortunately, you cannot tax your way to prosperity. However, we can certainly help our businesses, our small companies and, indeed, our large companies to be competitive and to compete on a world scale. The more we encourage and help them and the easier we make it for them, the more successful they will be. And then, not only that, we will get more money from them to fund all of our public measures.

There is another measure that I am very happy to talk about in relation to the Treasury Laws Amendment (Accelerated Depreciation For Small Business Entities) Bill 2017. You would remember, Mr Deputy Speaker Georganas, that this accelerated depreciation measure was introduced a number of years ago. I cannot walk the streets of any of my towns without someone in a small business saying, 'This is one of the best things they have ever seen.' They like the tax cut, but I think they would put this measure up there as an equal. You know how it works, Mr Deputy Speaker. If you are a small business—and it has double whammy effect for some—you get a tax write-off on any capital purchase of less than $20,000. This obviously encourages you to go out and spend, and it improves your cash flow situation. A lot of businesses benefit not only from that measure but also from people coming to buy things from them, with the idea of getting the tax write-off. When this measure was first announced, some of the businesses I spoke to in the agricultural sector—businesses who sell machinery to farmers, such as big ride-on mowers and that type of stuff—they said that sales of those types of items just went through the roof straightaway. For some businesses, it is a double whammy. They get the tax write-off when they buy something and then they have people coming to them to buy something. Their business has expanded and boomed because of this injection to their cash flow.

It was most unfortunate that in my region in the last two months—on 31 March, in fact—that the CBD of Lismore was flooded. It was a devastating blow. I recall the images of the flood from when I was walking around the town. The levee over topped in the very early hours of Friday morning. The place was literally flooded for two days. You could not get into the CBD until the Sunday. I will always remember that Sunday, walking the streets of the CBD as all the owners went into their outlets to clean up. For many it has been a huge blow, because in some cases they had six foot of water and even higher come into their shops and destroy a lot of things. Some people had time to put things up; some people did not. Not that it is important for me, but my own office also flooded. The floods have caused great havoc for small businesses in the town of Lismore.

A couple of things have happened from that. The Lismore Chamber of Commerce and Industry did a great job. We had a meeting just a few days after the flood. We were applying for category C funding. The chamber got very mobilised. We got a lot of forms to small businesses at this public meeting, which was on, I think, a Thursday morning at the university. We had 600 people fill out this form and return it to us. Within two weeks of the flood, we had category C funding declared and a grant for small businesses to help them go out and recapitalise. It was a $15,000 grant, which for some was great, for some it helped and for some it will not go close enough to helping but at least it has assisted in a way. That has been a great help, and so is the depreciation on the purchase of capital goods helping them. Not only are they getting a grant; but they know that when they go out and spend the money it is tax deductible. They can write it off their taxable income straightaway. We need every bit of help we can get in order to get the economy and the people out there turning things over again.

I will just to go through some of the specifics of the legislation. We know that, based on current lodgements of 2015 to 2016 tax returns, 220,000 businesses have reported that they have used this measure and claimed nearly $2 billion in deductions. I actually think this number will get even bigger. I am still a little bit surprised. I go to a lot of business chamber meetings and talk to a lot of tax accountants especially in my region, and some of them are still unaware of this—not so much the tax accountants, but certainly some of the small businesses. In fact, I was doing a radio interview this morning and someone asked me about this and how it worked, and I was explaining to them what it was. They had read about the fact that we were doing it in 2017, and I told them we had been doing it for a number of years.

A key benefit of the $20,000 threshold, as we know, is that it encourages businesses. The whole idea of this is to give economies a boost, and it brings forward any type of capital investment that people have been thinking of making, because previously, as you know, if you bought something, although you could depreciate it, you could depreciate it only over time, at a certain percentage, depending on what it was, over a number of years. The fact that we have said that they can write it off straightaway has significantly brought forward capital investment, and that was the whole aim of this.

Another thing obviously has been very beneficial, and here I want to talk about pooling. Accelerated depreciation has two arms, the immediate depreciation for an asset less than the threshold but also the pooling of assets costing more than the threshold. The pooling arrangements are available to small businesses to provide greater simplicity for their tax affairs, as the pool depreciates all assets in the same way—15 per cent in the first year and 30 per cent each year after that. So, if you have a good that is worth more than $20,000 you can start to pool the goods together, and, again, it is an accelerated depreciation. Also, if the small business is registered for GST, the exclusive amount is taken to be the cost of the asset when calculating the depreciation amounts, and the immediate deductibility threshold is $20,000 exclusive of any GST. Where the entity is not registered for GST, then the GST-inclusive amount is taken to be the cost of the asset in the depreciation calculations and the immediate deductibility threshold of $20,000 inclusive of GST.

I want to give some examples so that people understand exactly what you might be able to do and what you could buy. Some of my neighbours have done this. For example, if you are a courier service then obviously you can go out and buy yourself a van. Neighbours and friends of mine who are farmers have gone out and bought themselves a secondhand ute, the sole use of which is for their farming activity. A book retailer could go out and buy things like bookcases or any capital equipment that they might need. Or it could be flooring—if you have to put new flooring into your retail outlet—or refrigeration or cooling equipment, or you could get a car in addition to a ute, if it is less than $20,000. Restaurant and cafe owners have so much capital equipment, and, as I said, a lot of this has been damaged recently in Lismore. You could go out to buy ovens, dishwashers and those types of things. And the great thing is that it is not capped at $20,000, so if you were to go out and buy an item, as a lot of local cafes and restaurants in Lismore are doing at the moment, such as a refrigerator for $15,000, you might also go out a bit later and buy an oven for another $15,000. It is not capped at $20,000. You can keep this. As long as the capital item is less than $20,000, it is not limited as to how much you do that, which, again, has given a great boost and brought forward many capital purchases.

So, again, I think this government understands small business. There are many people I know on this side of politics who have run a small business, and that is why we understand small business. I think one of the flaws of the other side of politics, with all due respect, is that there are not enough people over there who have run a small business, who understand small business. It is a cellular thing, when you wake up in the morning and you know not only that you have to pay or make your own salary from the activities but that you potentially have to do that for other people. At a cellular level you understand what it means to make a small business successful and the challenges you face when you run a small business.

We on this side of politics understand small business. The other side, unfortunately, do not. The previous speaker spoke about an economist who did not think the small business tax cuts were a good idea. I am an economist. I do not always advertise it; I do not necessarily treat it as a claim to fame. But I do treat as a claim to fame the fact that I have also run a small business. And while they may well find economists who do not think this is a good idea, I would say, with all due respect: go and find me an economist who has run a small business who would think this is not a good idea. And I think they would be struggling to do that. While they may well find economists who think this is not a good idea, there is not a small business in this country that does not think the instant asset tax write-off is a good idea—and the tax cut that the previous member said is not a good idea. Small businesses know it is good for them, our country and our economy and, therefore, good for the public services that we can provide if we encourage small businesses to succeed.

Ms MARINO (Forrest—Chief Government Whip) (18:25): There are over 12,000 small businesses in my electorate of Forrest, so that is over 12,000 instances where people have literally had a go. They have invested their own money, they have taken a huge risk, they have mortgaged their house or property and are working their hearts out in their small business. The Turnbull government is backing these courageous small business people. These are the small businesses who employ almost half of our country's workforce and pay significant tax. We know our economy grows when the small business sector is strong and doing well. We also know every small business started with someone's idea, someone's dream, someone's passion—along with the sheer hard work, dedication and sleepless nights that it takes to make it all happen.

To the small businesses in my electorate of Forrest and those right around Australia: this bill, and this government, backs you. The bill amends the tax law to help small businesses invest and grow. It is a continuation of a series of measures the Turnbull government has introduced to offer genuine support for small businesses. On any day, 5.6 million Australians are at work in small businesses across the country. They are earning a wage from one of our 3.2 million small businesses. These same small businesses make up 99 per cent of all Australian businesses and annually contribute $380 billion to our national economy—that is big business from small business.

Many of these small businesses are the heart and soul of rural and regional towns and communities, and many of us on this side are small business people. My husband and I bought our small business, a dairy farm, on the day we got married. Like most small businesses, it was head down and tail up for many years. We had a massive debt, a rundown property that needed developing and a very limited income. I am sure many small businesses that may be listening to this tonight can really identify with this start in business. And that is how I know that one way the government can assist small business is to cut small business taxes and red tape and introduce the instant asset write-off measure in this bill. It will reduce the burden of tax on small businesses, directly encourage growth—you can invest in yourself—and increase their ability to employ even more Australians. As I have said repeatedly, how often it is that the small businesses in a small regional community offer young people their first job and sometimes offer older Australians their last job. They support the fire brigade, the local service clubs and the local sporting clubs, and they are always there when we need them in those small communities.

The measures in this bill are part of the 2017-18 budget. Prior to the budget, the Turnbull government achieved a significant milestone to help small businesses by reducing the company tax rate on businesses with a turnover of $10 million or less—and that is turnover, not profit. Some small businesses, in spite of that turnover, actually make relatively small profits. That is because of the nature of their business. Those businesses owners have to work overtime themselves to pay for and retain their staff. These are the same people who often work in their businesses during the day and on their businesses at night—in particular, small family businesses. This can mean doing your accounts, BAS and ordering at night. This is exactly what happens in my own family business.

Because of the Turnbull government, the tax rate for small business is now at its lowest level in many, many decades, and small businesses have more money to invest in their business today. That change in the law also means more than 90,000 additional businesses have access to tax concessions with the redefinition of small business to those turning over the $10 million per annum. The bill continues the government's plan to back small businesses. Whether it is the local small-business owner in Dunsborough, the mature age worker in Bunbury or the young jobseeker looking to start their career in Busselton, the bill is full of opportunity.

In the 2015-16 budget, the Turnbull government increased the small business immediate deductibility threshold from $1,000 to $20,000 from 12 May until 30 June 2017. Well, this bill extends that measure by a further 12 months. Businesses with a turnover of less than $10 million can immediately deduct purchases of eligible assets, each costing less than $20,000. And they are doing it, Mr Deputy Speaker Hogan. You have referred to it yourself. And it is welcomed by many organisations that represent small business—do not worry about those economists that you spoke about—as well as by the small- and family-business owners themselves. The Council of Small Business Australia CEO, Peter Strong, said:

For the third year in a row, the Federal Government—

the Turnbull government—

has demonstrated a genuine commitment to small business.

There is a big difference between talking and action, and I think we have proved it.

Any logical person knows that the best form of welfare is a job. Often that job is in small-business. I visit small businesses constantly. I recently hosted the Minister for Small Business, and we visited a number of my small businesses. The overwhelming sense we both got was that small businesses see the instant asset write-off as a genuine opportunity. Businesses like Hot Weld Fabrication in Bunbury are the types of businesses who now have access to the instant asset write-off.

A number of businesses have been nominated for the very prestigious 2017 South West Small Business Awards. It is going be held later this month in Bunbury. There are too many of these nominated businesses to mention them all, but there are a few that I would like to mention. In the industrial area of Bunbury out at Halifax, the Warehouse Cafe feeds many mouths every day from the early hours of the morning through to the afternoon. This is an excellent small business employing eight people and offering products that are renowned for being really top notch. The cafe's service is exceptional. When you walk into the Warehouse Cafe, Barbara and her team will do everything they can to make sure that you get the food and service that you want and need. The south-west is home to many very efficient businesses across a number of different industries. In over 30 years, Southern Car Care has built a strong reputation. From window tinting to electrical goods, including cruise control and stereos, Southern Car Care even installs tinting for homes, as well. The business employs six people and offers good old-fashioned service, personalised to the customers' needs. What a great way to go. It is another very sound south-west small business. Other finalists in the small business awards include Balingup Heights Hilltop Forest Cottages, Bartercard South West, Built Right Approvals from Busselton, Heatseal Double Glazing, who do double-glazed windows and doors, Laser Electrical in Bunbury, Rando & Associates and Salon Sugar, a beauty salon in Bunbury—I think it is a great name!

For those of us who have actually run a small business, we understand exactly how tough it can be. As I said, small-business people are time poor. Under our measures in this bill, the business does not have to keep track of the item records and can use the extra cash flow to reinvest in the business. Assets valued at $20,000 or more can continue to be placed together in the small business simplified depreciation pool and depreciated at 15 per cent in the first income year and 30 per cent each income year thereafter. Once assets are placed in the pool, there is no requirement to track each item's depreciation over the multiple income years. In practical terms, for that small business and for those people at home at night doing this work, this really seriously reduces the burden of paperwork so that they can actually get on with the next day and do what they do best—employing people and contributing to the economy. The instant asset write-off has proven to be one of the most popular small business incentives by the Turnbull government. It encourages every one of those 3.2 million small businesses to invest in their business.

I cannot let this opportunity pass without calling out the opposition. As recently as last year the shadow Assistant Treasurer said:

… if you look at the current situation in terms of the corporate sector, you've got 28.5 per cent for small business and 30 per cent for big business. It makes sense to get them on the same level doesn't it?

Very logical. The member for Lilley even spoke approvingly of our plan, saying:

Reducing company tax will create new jobs and grow the economy right around the country, to the ultimate benefit of all Australians.

The chief of hypocrisy himself, the Leader of the Opposition, said on lowering the tax on small business:

Any student of Australian business and economic history since the mid-80s knows that part of Australia’s success was derived through the reduction in the company tax rate.

The Leader of the Opposition says:

We need to be able to make life easier for Australian business, which employs two in every three Australians.

What a turnaround! Now those very same people rail against the government daily about these measures. It is blatant hypocrisy—it is breathtaking. And, it is very risky for small businesses. Labor is determined to increase taxes for those small businesses with turnovers of up to $10 million. We are about creating more jobs—that is what this government are about—and that is why we have continued to back small business in this year's budget. Extending this instant asset write-off is a highlight in the budget for small business. Every time we walk in the door, that is a great message to deliver to a small business: 'We are backing you. We are giving you a chance to invest in your business and your people and to continue to grow.' That is what we are saying. Whether you are a trucking or a transport business, no matter what business you are, this government is backing you. If you are watching, we are backing small business. I am sure every time we do that we increase business confidence. As we have seen, small businesses, industry groups and business leaders right across the country have been vocal in their calls for an extension to the program—and we have responded to that. Our government is getting on with the job.

I congratulate the Minister for Small Business for also putting together what I call the small business tool kit—an invaluable resource for small businesses. I am very pleased to say that the minister responded very positively when I suggested this initiative so that small businesses are aware of the opportunities they can take advantage of. One important thing is the ability for small businesses to get online and arrange for the Australian Taxation Office to call them at a time that suits the small business. Isn't that a fantastic thing? I've talked about the fact that small business people work in their businesses during the day and often on their businesses at night dealing with the paperwork and the practicalities. If you have an issue or want to call the Australian Taxation Office, they can call you when it suits you and your small business. All small businesses need to know about this. There are times when you need to ring the ATO, so get online, sign up and they will call you when it suits you.

There is no doubt on this side that small business is the engine room of our economy. Family businesses are very much a part of that, from our farmers to every form of industry that we have in this country. I encourage small business every day. I know they are taking a great risk, I know the hard work—I have lived it and still live it. I congratulate the Treasurer on bringing this measure before the House and I encourage and implore the opposition to get behind this. Who in their right mind would not want to support small business in Australia? Perhaps only the Labor Party.

Mrs PRENTICE (Ryan—Assistant Minister for Social Services and Disability Services) (18:39): I rise tonight to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Accelerated Depreciation For Small Business Entities) Bill 2017. Let me start by paying tribute to small businesses throughout Australia for the perseverance and tenacity which sees them wake early and leave late every day, every week and every month of the year. You truly are the engine room of Australia's economy. Following the successful and popular initiative in the 2016-17 budget, this bill will enable small businesses with an annual turnover of less than $10 million to claim an immediate tax deduction for eligible assets costing less than $20,000 first used or installed for use by 30 June 2018. In fact, assets do not have to be brand new—second-hand assets are eligible to be immediately deducted if they cost less than $20,000 each. The highlight of the 2017 budget for small businesses was this extension of the instant asset write-off program, as it is most widely known, for a further 12 months.

Testament to the coalition, a pro-small-business government, this measure continues our strong record of backing small business. It will benefit approximately 3.2 million small businesses in Australia to grow and to deliver more and better paying jobs by helping them replace or upgrade their machinery and equipment. We know very well that a strong small-business sector equates to more jobs and job opportunities for Australians and is key to the success of local economies. Recognising that the small-business sector in Australia employs approximately 5.6 million Australians, the coalition stands behind them and is providing hardworking small-business owners with every opportunity to think big and succeed. The coalition's side of the House understands that businesses, not governments, employ people. However, smart people can lead to smarter commercial outcomes when backed by smart government policy. I know many smart businesses in my electorate of Ryan that appreciated these depreciation rules when they were first introduced in 2015. It is government policy providing a hand up, not a hand out.

In the Ryan electorate there are approximately 13,200 small businesses, which employ locals and support the local community. When I travel around my electorate, I am frequently inspired by the creative spirit of new small businesses and their owners—businesses which benefit from a supportive coalition government. Take, for example, Kenmore Plaza Seafood. Known by families in the area as the place of 'Charlie's Chips', Kenmore Plaza Seafood is thriving—so much so that the owners, a family business, have improved their eat-in dining options. Another community hub is the Pullenvale Marketplace. This microcosm of small businesses is home to a medical centre, a pharmacy, a restaurant and a cafe. As an employer of many local residents in Pullenvale and surrounding suburbs in the Ryan electorate, it is another prime example of investment in Australian small business.

A further success story of business innovation and entrepreneurship in the Ryan electorate is that of Opengear—an innovative leader in next-generation smart solutions to protect and manage critical ICT infrastructure. Beginning in 2004 with two employees at ilab in Toowong, Opengear now employs 64 staff worldwide and has offices across Australia, the USA, the UK and Europe. From humble beginnings, Opengear now boasts customers including tier 1 companies, DFAT and the Queensland Police, and they have been recognised with many product and technology awards.

I know the Minister for Small Business, in his second reading speech, mentioned his visit to a local Greek cafe in Parramatta. In my electorate I am fortunate to have a Greek cafe, Briki Espresso and Gelato Bar, located on Hawken Drive in St Lucia. Briki typifies the success that local small businesses have achieved through measures of the coalition government. Through incentives from then Treasurer the Hon. Joe Hockey's budget, Sav and his family were able to expand their business and grow it into a favourite Greek institution known throughout Brisbane. They will now reap the rewards of measures like the instant asset write-off and small-business tax cuts.

There are many other businesses in my electorate which will benefit directly or indirectly from the amendments contained in this bill. Small businesses are the lifeblood of Australia's economy and provide employment for young, old and, importantly, those with disability. When you consider that these businesses across Australia provide 42 per cent of the private non-financial sector jobs and around one-third of production, it becomes very clear that supporting them and their operation is vital. We all hear of the challenges faced by businesses, but it is the small business end of town which faces additional challenges in competing with larger entities. Economies of scale are not easily achieved. Access to finance is invariably more difficult. It is unfortunate that because of these many challenges the failure rate of small businesses is considerably high within their first year of operation. Year on year these businesses take risks and must brave and clear the inevitable hurdles that will arise.

The burden of red tape and compliance is proportionately greater for time-poor business owners, so it should be a confidence booster for them that the government has committed $300 million to states and territories to remove unnecessary regulatory barriers. Small business should not be about mindlessly completing unnecessary bureaucratic paperwork. Small business should be about employment, growth and ultimately profit and reinvestment. What astounds me—and as a former small business owner myself I speak with passion—is that the opposition leader and his cohort are quite literally business destroyers. Consider the opposition leader's budget in reply speech, when he announced that Labor plans to reverse tax cuts for small business. As Minister McCormack said recently, just as businesses receive the confidence injection to invest, grow and create more jobs, thanks to our small business tax cuts, Labor has now confirmed that it will hike small business taxes. Does the opposition leader really intend to deny more small businesses and their hardworking employees access to further investment and growth opportunities? Do they really want Australia to be uncompetitive on the world market? The next time the opposition leader is visiting his local corner score, perhaps to purchase a pie, please consider how the business owner, already fearful as to how they struggle to pay employees or how they often go without to ensure that the shop door actually opens, can open the next morning.

Let me be clear with sentiments that are shared widely among my small business constituency. Labor's cynical, opportunistic politics is the greatest threat the Australian economy. It is a threat to all manner of businesses, from butchers and bakers to local mechanics and cafes. The coalition government believes in small business because with a combination of good luck, good management and good government policy, the small business of today can become the big business of tomorrow. It is inevitable that Labor will harp on about cutting tax rates or providing relief to businesses. Their hypocritical big on small business, short on understanding is the same BS we have seen for a number of years in this parliament. I would seriously question whether the businesses in those seats held by Labor are particularly fond of the opposition's track record when it comes to not supporting Australian business. Labor is a threat to jobs and simply cannot be trusted. The opposition leader says one thing and does another, so how can Australian business trust them?

There is a well-known adage in small business that the harder you work the luckier you will be. I am a great believer in working hard to get ahead. I am also a great believer in government providing the right foundations and pathways to support those with aspirations. It is the policy in amendments like those contained in this bill that demonstrates the commitment that the Turnbull coalition government has to the businesses and people of Australia. We have a strong record when it comes to supporting small business. Given that this measure applies from 1 July, the successful passage of this legislation is critical to ensure certainty and confidence for small businesses. The Turnbull government continues to commit itself to unleashing Australia's business potential to invest, to grow and to pay their workers to support the economic future of all Australians. At the end of the day a business's business is business, and by providing the right foundations the coalition is supporting a path to success, rather than impeding their ability to undertake what they do best. I commend this bill to the House.

Mr VAN MANEN (Forde—Government Whip) (18:49): It is always a great pleasure to rise in this House and speak about small business, the engine room of our economy, and I take the opportunity to speak today on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Accelerated Depreciation for Small Business Entities) Bill 2017 and to applaud this government's unwavering commitment to supporting one of the most crucial elements of our national economy.

Before coming into this place, I had the joy of running a small business, along with my wife, and I also came from a family of small business people. And it is interesting that I now see our two sons seeking to venture the small business arena on their own. While they are still working, they are trying to build their own businesses on the side. As many on this side have experience, it gives us a good understanding and a good appreciation of the trials and tribulations of those hundreds of thousands of men and women who strive every day to build their small businesses right around this great country.

There are many, many people who have today put everything on the line to build their business for not only their family's wealth but also the wealth of future generations. They put it all on the line. Their house supports the mortgage that supports the small business and supports the overdraft. That is where all their wealth is tied up. As a government we are seeking to support these people who are prepared to put everything on the line every single day. These people not only put their future on the line but, due to the fact that they employ nearly 50 per cent of the workforce in Australia, also support the hopes and dreams of many, many other Australians—not just their own.

Such people give their absolute all to their work in order to give their children and the children of their employees a brighter future. In doing so, they are also sustaining and strengthening a sector that creates more jobs for Australian workers and more opportunities to build a vibrant and inviting community across our country. Many of these small business people also contribute enormously to the communities in which they live by being involved in various community organisations, such as Rotary or Lions, or being involved in and sponsoring their local sporting clubs—righting sponsorship for the team so that they have their jerseys, training equipment and footballs or soccer balls. This is what we see our small business people right around this country do so very, very well.

It is for this reason that I am proud to be part of this government, which is continually seeking to deliver for our small business sector. In my electorate of Forde, there are more than 14,600 small businesses that have built the foundation of our local economy. Several of these businesses have already taken advantage of our instant asset write-off program, and they welcome the extension of this program in the 2017-18 budget. The instant asset write-off program, which first started back in May 2015, has become instrumental for our small business community to help them replace or upgrade machinery and equipment with ease. The program improves cash flow for our businesses, which in turn boosts productivity, giving our small business owners chances they may not have had to employ more staff or to pay their existing staff more. Furthermore, when small businesses purchase more or better assets locally, communities and other businesses directly benefit from the flow-on effect of that purchase. This is because every dollar spent in a small business is a confidence boost for that business itself and for the community as a whole.

In addition to the instant asset write-off program, the government is also delivering a tax system that supports enterprise, by backing small businesses to invest and helping ensure that Australia continues to be an attractive place to do business. Such a move will secure our future and create jobs for hardworking Australians, also managing our transition to a more diversified economy that can continue to expand and create job opportunities for the employees of the future. We see many businesses, as I travel around my electorate, that you would not think are necessarily competing in the global marketplace. There are many like Poppys Chocolates, who are doing tremendous work around the country. Like every small business, they go through their ups and downs, but they continue to build and grow and develop and look for new market opportunities. That is where these programs and these tax cuts give them the direct incentive to do that.

This government is backing small business through a tax cut to 27.5 per cent for those with a turnover of less than $10 million from 1 July. This will deliver a lower tax rate for over 870,000 companies, who employ some 3.4 million workers, including more than 15,000 businesses in my electorate of Forde. This is not all this government is doing for the small business sector. We all know that our small business owners and their staff are time poor. This is why we are working hard to develop a simpler business activity statement that will help our small businesses save time and money when they are completing the GST reporting, allowing them to focus on things that really matter in the day-to-day running of their business.

Alongside this, we are also seeking to abolish further red tape. In that regard we are providing some $300 million to the state governments in order for them to find ways to reduce the red tape that small businesses face every day. Reducing the complexity of regulation for our businesses makes it easier for business to get on with the job of doing business. As the member for Ryan quite rightly pointed out in her contribution, proportionately the impact of red tape is far greater on our small business sector than it is on our large corporate sector, because our small business sector does not have the capacity to manage the red tape burden. They do not have the accountants and the advisers and the in-house people that can manage all that red tape process. It is the owners of those businesses and their staff that have to manage that on a day-to-day basis. That is why reducing red tape for small business will be such an important achievement for those businesses, because the less time they are spending on red tape, the more time they can spend working with their customers, suppliers and potential new customers to build their businesses.

We are levelling the playing field for Australian small business retailers online by applying the GST to low-value imported goods. The $1.1 billion National Innovation and Science Agenda announced in December 2015 also contains a range of initiatives and programs to support small business to be more innovative. We believe that small businesses are where dreams and big ideas begin. This agenda will give them better access to finance and help them prepare to have a go at something new. I see that in businesses around my electorate on a regular basis. We are talking to people about getting new ideas off the ground and how we can assist them. As part of this we are creating the modern digital marketplace to make it easier for small businesses to compete for the government's $9 billion information and communications technology contract. We will also require government agencies to pay invoices for contracts valued up to $1 million within 30 days. The government has made it easier for small business to access Commonwealth contracts under $200,000 and made credit and debit cards the government's preferred payment method for purchases up to $10,000. We are opening up new forms of financing for small business by legislating the crowd-sourced equity funding framework for public companies, and in establishing the Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman we are providing a strong voice for small business.

All of these measures prove the coalition government is showing great leadership in managing and assisting the small business sector by helping to create a framework for small businesses to grow and prosper into the future. This government is about improving small business confidence, and we see this as a great way of encouraging Australians to support the sector whenever and wherever they can. The more Australians shop locally and access services locally, the more opportunity there is for business to create jobs and wealth for the future. I am looking forward to seeing the small businesses in my electorate continue to thrive over this coming financial year thanks to the support and dedication of this government, which is determined to give them every opportunity to do so. I commend this bill to the House.

Mr IRONS (Swan) (19:00): I rise to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Accelerated Depreciation For Small Business Entities) Bill 2017. I would like to begin by thanking the Minister for Small Business for introducing this bill and including the extension of the instant asset write-off as a key budget measure. I thank the minister for all the work he puts into his portfolio, the work that assists almost 20,000 small businesses in my electorate of Swan alone. I know the minister was a small-business owner himself, as I am. In fact, a large number of members on this side of the House have been small-business owners. That is why we know just how much of a positive impact bills like this will have on hardworking everyday Australians.

Across our great nation there are 5.6 million Australians—almost a quarter of our population—working and earning a wage from one of the 3.2 million small businesses. In my electorate of Swan, this includes businesses in the Kewdale-Welshpool industrial hub and the Belmont Business Park. It includes the extensive cafe and restaurant strip along Albany Highway in Victoria Park, in which my electorate office is located, and where there are more than 100 car yards. In fact, I started my own business in Anvil Way off Division Street in Welshpool all the way back in 1988 and continued to work in the air-conditioning and refrigeration sector for more than 25 years, after spending seven years as the state manager for a national air-conditioning company.

The 2017 budget extends the $20,000 instant asset write-off for a further 12 months to 30 June 2018 and the turnover threshold will be lifted to $10 million, actively improving cash flow for small businesses, helping them to reinvest in their businesses and to replace or upgrade their assets. I have listened to the speeches of people on the other side of the chamber today, who talked about going to the last election with their definition of small businesses as being $2 million. If you know anything about small business, you will know that, across the sectors, including government, insurance companies, and various NGOs and not-for-profit bodies, there are different definitions of a small business. For me, the definition of a small business goes to the amount of people they employ, and $10 million is a reasonable level to classify a small business. When I was running my business, there were only three people working in it and it had a turnover of in excess of $6 million. The problem for the Labor Party is that they think the $2 million is profit. They just do not get that there is a difference between turnover and profit. That is why they are saying that a small business is $2 million. Their definition of it is totally incorrect. There are a lot of companies out there with only three to five people or maybe even 10 people—which is a small business by a lot of definitions throughout different sectors—that turn over far more than $2 million. But, because the Labor Party do not know anything about small business, they come in here and say, 'We have people who work in small business,' and they educate people on how to deal with media. Giving lessons to union people on how to do interviews with the media is not a small business. It is not creating anything and it is not employing people; it is just pretending to be a small business.

The 2017 budget extends the $20,000 instant asset write-off, as I said before. So how does this actually work? For the benefit of those opposite, let me break it down further. Accelerated depreciation has two arms: immediate depreciation for each asset less than the threshold of $20,000 until 30 June 2018; and pooling for assets costing more than the threshold which cannot be immediately deducted under other provisions. The pooling arrangements are available to small businesses to provide greater simplicity for their tax affairs. As the pool depreciates all assets in the same way—15 per cent in the first year and 30 per cent in each year after that—small businesses do not need to spend valuable time tracking each individual asset against different depreciation rates over time. Anyone who has run a business would understand that the depreciation tracking and depreciation schedules have been maintained over many years. I know, having been in business before there were tools introduced by the coalition, this particular process was very time-consuming—particularly for accountants, who charge a fair amount of money.

As to the GST, if the small business is registered for GST, then the GST-exclusive amount is taken to be the cost of the asset when calculating depreciation amounts, and the immediate deductibility threshold is $20,000, exclusive of any GST. For those on the other side who might not know—as the Premier of Queensland did not know—the GST rate is 10 per cent. So you can actually buy, as a business which is registered for GST, an item worth $22,000, and the actual write-off is the $20,000 threshold. Where the entity is not registered for GST, then the GST-inclusive amount is taken to be the cost of the asset in the depreciation calculations, and the immediate deductibility threshold is $20,000, inclusive of any GST.

As a proud Liberal, I see it as our duty to nurture and encourage our citizens through incentives, rather than to only impose limitations. The role of government is to provide an environment in which private enterprise will thrive. It is our duty to provide opportunity for all Australians to facilitate wealth, so that all may enjoy the highest possible standards of living; to foster an environment in which the people we represent can achieve their goals; and, perhaps most importantly, to promote individual freedom and free enterprise—arguably, most evident in the small businesses across this nation.

Ninety-nine per cent of all Australian businesses are small businesses, and they collectively contribute $380 billion to our gross domestic product annually. As we, on this side of the chamber, understand, small businesses are the backbone of Australia, and to help them grow and succeed will mean greater employment opportunities and better opportunities for all Australians.

I have heard those on the other side today saying that Labor is the party of small business. In the whole 25 years in which I ran a small business, I never once thought that Labor were the party of small business. All I ever saw was that, whenever Labor came in, they made it tougher for us; they imposed more restrictions on our freedom to operate; they imposed heavier taxes. They also imposed on us the '93 difficulty. I know that in my business I went without pay for 10 months, purely because of the fact that Paul Keating's policies made for a terrible onslaught on small businesses, which suffered dramatically.

As the minister would know from his own experience as a small business owner, the rules around depreciation of tools and equipment are complex and variable. If something like this measure had existed back when I was running my business, I would have saved hours and hours of accountancy time over the course of the 25 years I was in business.

Every dollar that is spent in small business is an injection of confidence into that business and, by extension, into the local community. It creates a chain reaction that extends from our small businesses. While those on the other side of the House seek to further make our small businesses less competitive, we, on this side of the House, are giving the backbone of our country the tools necessary to expand and compete in the global economy, and ensuring that we live up to our word on backing small business.

$5.8 billion in red tape has been abolished by the coalition government. This means saving business owners time so that they can focus on growing their small businesses and not on complying with some bureaucratic process that does nothing to deliver for the greater community.

We on this side of the House have small business experience. I know how hard my good friend the member for Wright worked in running his trucking business. I know that the member for Gilmore worked tirelessly to ensure her fudge-making business was successful. I know that the member for Fadden had a big business before he came into parliament. He had an IT business that employed 160 staff. I doubt whether anyone on that side of the House would ever have gone near employing 160 staff. They might have worked, through their union processes, to make sure that 160 staff were pushed off sites or sacked from companies—or, when they drove businesses into the ground, they got rid of 160 staff.

I can remember when I was on a building site as an apprentice. I see that the Minister for Small Business is here; he would get this. The first thing that happened to me as an apprentice was that the union shop steward, who was Scottish and had red hair, came onto the site and, while I was up on a scaffold, insisted that I produce my union ticket. Unfortunately, after 20 minutes of abusing me—because I said 'I'm working and I'm not coming down'—he walked off and said he was going to shut the site down. I must admit that I did wait until he got about 50 metres away and then I called him back and said, 'Sorry, but I'm an apprentice.' His disgust in that situation at missing out on an opportunity to shut the site down was palpable; you could see that he was so disappointed. As someone said a long time ago, if we got rid of all the Scottish Unionists in Australia we would probably be in a much better place.

Mr Conroy: Faux racist! Why do you hate Doug Cameron?

Mr IRONS: I will take that interjection, don't worry! The member for Dunkley ran the Nineteen Consulting business—

The SPEAKER: I will just caution the member for Shortland. That interjection is completely unparliamentary and he will withdraw it.

Mr Conroy: I withdraw and I apologise.

The SPEAKER: The member for Swan.

Mr IRONS: Accepted. The list goes on and on. It is a rewarding job running a small business. You may miss out on family holidays—and we in this place all understand that—because you cannot afford to put the business on hold for a few days. Your work day does not end when the clock strikes five. You work through the night because you are not going to let this plan go, you are not going to let the income for your family to survive go. We understand what it is like to be forced to reach into your own pockets when times are tough just to keep people in work. Small business owners have to make great sacrifices to keep people in work, to ensure that they keep their jobs, to ensure that they still receive their wages and to ensure that they feed their families.

For too long, the pressure on small business owners has been mounting. For too long, we have taken their hard work for granted. Our small businesses need our support. That is why this government is cutting small business taxes from 1 July 2016, reducing the corporate tax rate from 28.5 per cent to 27.5 per cent from 1 July 2017, further reducing the corporate tax rate to 25 per cent by 2026-27 and increasing the unincorporated tax discount rate. That is why this government is increasing the number of businesses eligible for a range of small business tax concessions, with the small business entity turnover threshold being increased from $2 million per annum to $10 million per annum as previously noted. That is why this government is introducing a national partnership on regulatory reform providing up to $300 million over two years to states and territories that remove unnecessary regulatory barriers.

It is not only those on this side of the House that can see the benefits of measures like this. The Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, James Pearson, said:

Small businesses are particularly pleased to see the highly successful instant asset write-off extended to June 2018, reflecting our Pre-Budget Submission, and made available to businesses with a turnover up to $10 million. We are confident this will encourage restaurants to buy more kitchen equipment, landscape gardeners to buy more lawn mowers and tech companies to buy more hardware.

He continued:

Extension of the instant asset write-off is terrific. We heard firsthand from small businesses during our roadshow tour with the Minister for Small Business and the Australian state and territory chamber network for the instant asset write-off to be extended, as well as the call for more reductions to regulation and red tape.

One of the key benefits of the temporary $20,000 threshold is that it encourages businesses to bring forward key capital investment from future years to the current income year, renewing their capital base. When we first introduced the $20,000 instant asset write-off a business in my electorate called Print Ezy, based in Victoria Park, went out and purchased a new printing machine for his business. That measure allowed him to instantly write it off. The actual result of that—and I know the Minister for Small Business will be interested to hear this—when I spoke to him two weeks ago, he said that machine has created so much business that now he has to go out and buy a $100,000 machine. That instant asset write-off was a bonus to his business and now he has to go out and buy a machine that is capable of producing far more printing for his customers and his clients. So it has a positive effect. The coalition can see that. We understand that. We understand that providing incentives, providing instant asset write-offs, to businesses all across Australia gives them the ability to buy equipment that will improve the efficiencies of their business.

Another benefit is that this measure does not only apply to tangible assets but to intangible assets also, such as computer software and intellectual property, provided that the cost is under $20,000 each. I have a short time left and I would again like to congratulate the Minister for Small Business for his efforts in implementing this bill, and I commend this bill to the House.

Mr McCORMACK (Riverina—Minister for Small Business) (19:16): It is great to follow on from the member for Swan. His was a captivating speech. And I see the member for Brisbane in the chamber as well. Certainly, those two understand small business and I very much appreciate and acknowledge the roles that they played before they came to parliament in the small business space. I would also like to thank those members who have contributed to this debate.

With 3.2 million small businesses employing 5.6 million Australians and contributing $380 billion to the economy annually the small business sector plays a critical role in the Australian economy. To make sure that the Australian economy ticks along nicely, the government is committed to backing small business each and every day. By implementing the policies that give small businesses the confidence to invest and grow and to employ—to hire more Australians and create more jobs.

This bill amends the tax law to extend the $20,000 immediate deductibility threshold for another 12 months, until 30 June 2018. This will allow small businesses with turnover less than $10 million to immediately deduct purchases of eligible assets, each costing less than $20,000 first used or installed, ready for use, by 30 June 2018. Assets valued at $20,000 or more can continue to be placed into the small business simplified depreciation pool and depreciated at 15 per cent in the first income year and 30 per cent each income year thereafter. This extended measure will improve small business cashflow, encouraging small businesses to invest in their business for another year. The Liberals and Nationals understand that, when small businesses get just a bit of additional money, they reinvest it back into their own business to enable them to grow and to, as I said before, hire more Australians and create more jobs.

This 12-month extension continues the government's strong record of backing small businesses, supporting them all the way; to grow, and to deliver more jobs and better-paying jobs, including by helping them replace or upgrade their machinery, their capital equipment. We know the benefit is felt economy-wide, in metropolitan cities, in the outer suburbs, in rural, remote and regional Australia. A small business recently informed us that the instant asset write-off had a chain reaction through the local economy. That was the lovely Alana Laliotitis in Parramatta. She owns Kouzina Greco restaurant, and she said it created a chain reaction when installed new kitchen equipment for her very popular restaurant—I visited that restaurant with Senator Marise Payne, the Defence Minister, after launching the two-dollar commemorative coin recently.

Alana told us how she went and bought new kitchen equipment. She used a local electrician to install the equipment and it created a chain reaction through her business. It created greater efficiency in the kitchen, which then created greater productivity. Her staff, she reported, even got a boost from it. 'Staff morale improved,' she said. But, most importantly, more customers came through the door. And that is what all small businesses want—more customers. The results from purchasing an asset locally, arranging for locals to install the asset and having happier staff due to the new equipment ultimately produces a better product for customers.

Over the past few months I have met with and heard from hundreds of small business owners who have told me how they have used the instant asset write-off to grow their business. The instant asset write-off has proved to be a very popular small business measure, and was the highlight for small business in this year's budget. Indeed, 9 May was a red letter day for small business. In fact, I would almost describe it as more black than red, because it is enabling them to get more profits, and all small business want to be in the black, not the red. Coincidentally, the morning of 9 May was when the 27½ per cent tax rate was installed for businesses with a turnover of up to $10 million. So those measures provided for in the previous year's budget were in fact enshrined in law. That enabled the instant asset write-off, introduced that night—and hopefully this bill will be passed tonight in the lower house—now enables businesses with a turnover of up to $10 million to take advantage of this instant asset write-off.

Another great example was Anna Mitsios, the founder of Edible Beauty in Sydney. She needed the instant asset write-off to be extended so that she could buy a forklift to keep up with the demand for her products in Asia. She is taking advantage of the free trade agreements that we have been able to broker with South Korea, Japan and China. She said:

We need to palletise our warehouse as we get bigger orders from Asia. I used the write-off to finance a car last year. It's been a huge help.

In the member for Swan's electorate, small business owner Dina Otley, who runs Nosh Gourmet Food and Gifts, told of how she has used the instant asset write-off to invest in a small kitchen and equipment, which led to her employing new staff. She said:

More than long-term tax cuts, this has an immediate effect of helping us to keep investing in the future of our business. As a small business it is always difficult to maintain a competitive offer against larger rivals with more resources and buying power.

A great quote. Mechanic Tery Wallace wanted to see the instant asset write-off extended this year. The owner of Boyd's Garage in Surrey Hills said:

We need all the help we can get in small business and that tax incentive was a great idea which should be continued.

I would be a bit worried if it wasn't continued to be honest—because we need people to invest in small business.

Through the passage of this bill, we are delivering the extension which Tery, stakeholders and many small business owners have called for.

These are real stories of the men and women at the forefront of small business, who have explained in practical terms how the instant asset write-off is benefitting their business operations, In conjunction with our plan to provide tax relief for small business—down to 27½ per cent; the lowest it has been for many, many decades—a and a turnover threshold of up to $10 million, this government is supporting small businesses to create new opportunities and boost productivity to secure Australia's future.

For those who have run a small business—and there are many on this side of the House—we know that every little bit counts, every little bit makes a big difference. We understand the daily pressures and demand in managing staff, balancing cash flow and meeting reporting obligations. That is why this side is also getting on with the job of cutting through red tape. The member for Swan mentioned the fact that $5.8 billion annually has already been cut from that burden which is such a pressure on small business. Of course, in the budget—that excellent budget produced by the member for Cook—$300 million was put on the table to incentivise states and territories to see where they could further cut through some of that red tape which is bogging down business.

The member for Reid, in his role as Assistant Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, last year in Parramatta rolled out the national business simplification incentive, which helps the hospitality industry cut through that red tape between federal, state and local government—breaking down the silos so that, for instance, a coffee shop, rather than having an 18-month wait from go to whoa, would have that time reduced to just three months. We have listened to small businesses so that we could deliver the best support they need to get ahead and to get on with what they do best.

We know Australia's 3.2 million small businesses are central to keeping our economy strong. They look to this government for support and action. A strong small business sector means more jobs for Australians, more opportunities to build vibrant local communities across the country. We are extending the instant asset write-off so hardworking small businesses can continue to get ahead.

A few stakeholder quotes: Derek Shoen, the President of NSW Farmers, said on 9 May: 'The association is particularly pleased to see the $20,000 immediate asset write-off provisions for small businesses continue for a further year.' James Pearson, the CEO of the Australian Chamber Of Commerce and Industry, said: 'Extension of the instant asset write-off is terrific. We heard firsthand from small businesses during our roadshow tour with the Minister for Small Business and the Australian state and territory chamber network for the instant asset write-off to be extended as well as the call for more reductions to regulation and red tape.'

Innes Willox, the CEO of the Australian Industry Group said: 'Critically, the budget provides a substantial boost for smaller businesses by lowering tax burdens, extending asset write-off eligibility and cutting red tape.' Kate Carnell, the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, who is doing a fantastic job, said: 'It is great to see another budget focused on small business. This gives small business a level playing field with a capacity to grow.' Geoff Crouch from Wagga Wagga, the chair of the Australian Trucking Association, said: 'The government's decision to extend the instant asset write-off to 30 June 2018 will benefit many eligible businesses.' He would know, because he and his industry keep goods moving. They are the lifeblood of getting goods freighted across the country. Geoff certainly understands the instant asset write-off and its advantages.

Melina Morrison, who is the CEO of the Business Council of Co-operatives and Mutuals, said: 'Any assistance which is given to small businesses, such as the continued $20,000 capital write-off and small business company tax cuts, will be welcomed by BCCM members.' There you have it: very much appreciated by stakeholders and by real small business owners right across the nation. With that I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Mr McCORMACK (Riverina—Minister for Small Business) (19:27): by leave—I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.