The following is Sussan’s address to the CPA Albury Wodonga branch – Atura Hotel, Albury
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Before I start, I want to thank Karyn for her generous invitation and for all of the work that she does to connect CPA members, locally, with the issues that matter.
Well can I say what a pleasure it is, and a timely one at that, to have been invited to speak this morning.
Financial service professionals are rightly paid for the work that they deliver but it’s not acknowledged anywhere near enough, just how valuable the advice that you provide your clients actually is.
Whether it’s from a strategy perspective, loss mitigation, and more importantly than ever, legislative changes, you know what could be lurking around the corner for your clients and this, ultimately, saves local jobs and creates opportunity locally.
The value of the work that each person in this room does is certainly not lost on me.
Like many of you, I studied economics, taxation law, and accounting.
In my case, I studied as a mature-aged student, juggling responsibilities on the family farm, raising three kids, and then going to work at the ATO, right here in Albury.
I’m sure that this is a familiar story to many in this room.
Some might say that it’s ‘unsexy’ work, but I would say that this is the work that changes the oil or the fuel filter and otherwise keeps the show on the road for what many call the engine room of the Australian economy – our two-and-a-half million small and family businesses.
What I’m seeing
You don’t need me to tell you that the road ahead for Australian small and family businesses is a rocky one.
The Governor of the Reserve Bank talks about the ‘narrow path’.
I think she is right and it’s a reminder that whilst Australian small businesses are not driving off a cliff, they are most certainly driving along a dangerous cliff edge.
You see this in the accounts of your clients and I see it in the faces of the now over 500 small businesses which I have engaged with during the course of this parliamentary term.
Whilst we relish the opportunity to talk about the challenges that this presents, we are all charged with the immense responsibility of actually doing something about it.
I acknowledge from the outset that there have been a number of recent changes in the world of financial advice that will make it harder, not easier, for you to discharge your responsibilities and I hope to touch on these later.
Connection with small business
It’s been my privilege to serve as the representative of the people of southern and western New South Wales in our Federal Parliament for over two decades.
As the Member for Farrer, I’ve always cared about what happens to our local small businesses, but when I was elected as Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, I could choose my portfolios.
I chose small business because I understand the important role that small business provides in weaving the fabric of our regions and, indeed, our nation.
I also understand what it is like to run a small family business.
I know what it is like when the government gets it wrong and you have to face the consequences.
I now have the great fortune of meeting and listening to small businesses across our electorate, the tenth largest in Australia, but across the entire country.
Whether it’s right here in Albury or in the suburbs outside of Perth, whether it’s in our smaller townships and villages like Howlong, Finley, Henty, or indeed, in the towns around the Scenic Rim of South East Queensland, these diverse and distant communities are unified by the pain that is currently being felt by their small businesses.
I’ve found that the unwavering smiles which greet you when you enter a small business can often mask a very real sense of despair.
As I look them in the eye and ask how it’s really going, the veneer drops and some are reduced to tears.
The state of small businesses, that I see, is dire.
They haven’t paid themselves in months.
They face:
- skyrocketing electricity bills,
- higher loan repayments,
- increased staff costs and complexity around hiring;
- fewer apprentices and trainees coming through, and
- near-impossible insurance premiums.
These resilient and innovative businesses have survived a once-in-a-century pandemic and yet are faced with the risk of being unable to survive today.
Worse still, there is every indication from the Reserve Bank that things will get worse before they get better.
What we are doing from Opposition
The first job of any Opposition is to hold the government of the day to account and I can confidently say Peter and our team in Canberra are well and truly hitting our KPIs on that front.
The second job of any Opposition is to work with the Government on the things that matter and the things that the Australian people expect us to work on, collaboratively, as a Parliament.
The first things that might come to mind are defence and national security, however, you have probably also seen bipartisanship in recent weeks with respect to the costs and sustainability of the NDIS and the Aged Care sector.
Just last month, however, the Coalition had to decide whether it would shoot down the first piece of small business legislation, brought forward by the Small Business Minister, in this entire term of Parliament.
The legislation sought to improve the speed by which big companies pay Aussie small businesses.
And you might think that being the actual party of small business and having now being girded by a Labor Party intent on testing the limits of misleading and deceptive conduct laws by anointing themselves with the same very title, that we would just say no.
But if you ask me, and I’m sure if you ask any person in this room, the cash flow of Australian small businesses is far too important a thing for us to just say no.
Australians would rightly expect us to work collaboratively with the government and that is exactly what we did.
We did so, not by engaging in parliamentary horse trading, as is so often the habit of the minor parties and the so-called independents, but we actually asked the people whom know most about those that would be affected by these changes.
We listened to over a dozen representative organisations, including the CPA, and had amendments drafted that prevented the Government from proceeding with legislation that actually disincentivised big businesses from engaging small Aussie businesses at a time when they need the pipeline of work and cash flow the most.
It’s not always the best sign when your changes to business law receive the support of the Greens but our changes received the support of the entire Senate, including the Government, and have now become the law of the land – to the betterment of all Australian small and family businesses.
Small business policy
The third job of a responsible opposition party of government is to say what it would do differently, were it to form government. There are three things front and centre for every small and family business that we would do differently to get Australia back on track and I want to give you a snapshot of those today.
Giving small business a break
First, the Coalition will give small business a break – a break they so desperately deserve and need.
Not only will we cut the red and green tape that, whilst sold as catching only big business, is instead choking job creation, livelihoods in communities like our own, and the innovation that we know small and family businesses can be the key drivers of.
The Coalition will expand the Instant Asset Write-Off to assets valued up to $30,000 and make this an ongoing feature of our tax law to provide certainty for small businesses.
This will simplify depreciation for millions of small businesses by boosting investment in productive assets, lower business costs, and put downward pressure on prices for consumers.
I know that this will come as a relief to so many in this room whom have had to continually update their clients on the existence and value of what was a policy mainstay under the former Coalition governments.
We will also seek to remove the regulatory roadblocks that are stopping small businesses from growing by condensing approval processes and not forcing large firms to spend more than a billion dollars a year policing the emissions of every small business they deal with.
We will also deliver competition policy which gives smaller businesses a fair go.
Industrial relations
As you know, the only thing standing between mass defaults on mortgages is the high rates of employment and high nominal wage growth that we have seen, across the economy.
The fundamentals of the economy such as real wage growth, a proxy for productivity, have flatlined under the current government and we have seen negative GDP growth per capita, a proxy for living standards, in negative territory for five consecutive quarters.
Just as we learnt from the pandemic, strong relationships between employees and employers are essential for individuals, families and communities like ours to survive and thrive in difficult times.
Those relationships should be as collaborative as possible and should not descend into the tired class-warfare rhetoric of the last century.
This is particularly important in the case of small and family businesses where the employee and the employer are, ultimately, on the same team.
That’s not the philosophy of this government and we need look no further than yesterday for an example of the friction that they are seeking to reintroduce into workplaces at a time when collaboration and flexibility is most desired and required by Australians.
Yesterday marked the first day of enforcement for a whole swathe of industrial relations changes, which not even the discredited CFMEU could have dreamt of becoming law in an advanced market economy such as our own.
These changes will kill productivity and be yet another burden on business in this country.
Many of these changes will tie mum and dad business owners in legal knots after enforcement commences for Australian small businesses in a year from yesterday.
The Coalition has already said that it will kill the nebulous ‘right to disconnect’ and will revert to a simple definition of a casual worker instead of the ridiculous multi-factorial test introduced by this Government.
Energy
It would be of no surprise to anyone in this room that the first cost challenge that small business owners will raise with me are their power bills.
Since the last election, we know that electricity prices have risen by 22 per cent and gas has risen by 25 per cent.
The Coalition will end the demonisation of gas, pursued by this Government, a source of energy that is so essential to businesses large and small in this country.
We will end the renewables-only fanaticism of the current Government and ensure that we transition from a mix of coal, gas and renewables to a mix of zero-emissions nuclear technology, gas, and renewables.
This will put downward pressure on electricity and gas prices by doing the only thing that works when you want the economy to grow and that is by bringing more supply into the market.
Short-term rebates for consumers and small business owners wouldn’t be necessary had the zealotry of this government not made such a mess of our energy markets, security, and sovereignty.
Labor’s war on local advisors
Regrettably, financial service professionals, such as yourselves, haven’t been spared from the ire of the current Government in Canberra.
Just this past week, my colleague and Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Luke Howarth, sought to move a disallowance motion in Parliament to stop the new obligations on our tax agents, rushed in by the Labor Government. I know these obligations are of concern to and affect many here this morning.
As a Coalition, we know that further consultation is needed on these new regulations, and I have already heard personally from local accountants as to the practical impacts the introduction of the Tax Agent Services Determination 2024 will have.
These new obligations are:
- far-reaching;
- poorly drafted;
- near impossible for smaller tax agents to comply with;
- unrealistic with respect to the commencement timeframe; and
- without regulator guidance to follow.
I am also concerned about the new requirement to report to clients on any matter that could significantly influence a decision of a client to engage with them.
One local financial professional wrote to me, deeply concerned with, and I quote, “the way section 45 of the determination is currently drafted, [given that] the words, ‘any matter’, could be interpreted to include personal matters about my health.”
They went further, stating that, “this is an overreach and intrudes into my right to privacy”.
We know also that the Determination requires financial professionals to report about ongoing investigations before there is an outcome, and inconsistent requirements such as a duty to ‘dob in’ clients despite an existing obligation to not disclose confidential client information without the clients’ permission.
We know that this industry is already facing a shortage of young people equipped to take the reins and the introduction of more unnecessary red tape for our most trusted professionals is going to further burden an industry already under pressure.
That is also of concern to me, and I know this is an issue that faces so many of our regional businesses, especially for local tax practices.
It is also of concern that it has been reported ABS forecasts show that Australia requires nearly 340 thousand accountants by 2026 – which equates to almost 10,000 extra each year.
I know that many of you do more than your bit to bring on young people from school and from university and ensure that they get the experience and qualifications necessary to meet the high professional standards of your industry.
We should be making this easier and not harder for you.
Here in the regions, we have been insulated with high export prices for our produce, but we need to grapple with the reality that if we aren’t skilling our young people as a first order priority and we aren’t bequeathing them a low-cost and high-opportunity economy, then they will simply give-up and pack-up.
Call to action
My call to action to you today is a simple one – speak-up.
No one knows your business better than you and no one knows someone else’s business better than their financial advisors.
You see the faces, you know the stories, and you have the data.
Together, we must hold a candle to what is really going on in our region, but also to small and family businesses, nationally.
We know that even an Australian record for business insolvencies in the last financial year doesn’t tell the full story of what’s going on in the real economy.
I would encourage you, as the professionals that you are, to use your great platform to speak-up in support of policies, locally and nationally, that will enable our young people to build upon your hard work and successes in keeping the engine room of the Australian economy running strong.
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