Standing up for Small Business

Ms BELL (Moncrieff) (13:51): Last Wednesday, I hosted a small business roundtable in my Surfers Paradise office to bring together local business leaders, and I wish to acknowledge Anne Nalder, Laura Younger, Kelsey Taylor, Matthew Anderson and Emma Curtis for taking the time to share their experiences and concerns. The overwhelming sentiment from every person around that table was simple: Labor’s toxic taxes punish hard work, aspiration and investment. Now, just weeks after delivering its budget, Labor is scrambling to introduce carve outs. If these taxes are bad enough to run away from now, they are bad enough to scrap all together.

The government told Australians they would not touch capital gains tax, negative gearing, trusts, super or stage 3 tax cuts. Labor broke those promises. If you couldn’t trust Labor on tax a month ago, you cannot trust them now. These carve outs do not fix the problem. They just let Canberra decide which businesses are worthy, which businesses are innovative and which Australians are allowed to get ahead. Small-business people know the truth. Every good business has to innovate every day just to survive. More complexity does not fix bad law. This is a failed policy from a failed budget. Labor should stop playing politics, withdraw the bill, scrap these toxic taxes and start again. This is an all-out assault on Gold Coast small and family businesses.