Thank you for having me here today, I wouldn’t have missed it for quids to be honest with you. I have travelled a long way - normally Victorians are only welcome if they play for the Melbourne Storm or are playing in a State of Origin team but it’s good to be up here.
Keith has outlined all of the Ministers that he has brought through your community and he is incredibly persuasive. What we look for from local members is a local champion who makes sure that your concerns are brought to the attention of those governing the country, so we can support the opportunities you reach for.
I have to acknowledge his worship the Mayor and Councillors – it’s good to see you all here. Peter Peterson deserves a particular cheer as he and his team have put a lot of energy and passion into organising today. We’ve also got Mark Brennan here who is the Australian Small Business Commissioner.
Mark’s role is one that we are looking to boost with more tools than teeth and his work in Ipswich earlier in his travels to Queensland, and here today, is to hear from you about what we can do to make sure that the crucial support service, dispute resolution and concierge type service, can help you find your way through the spaghetti of Government agencies and programs.
I said I was thrilled to be here for a couple of reasons. In a former life I used to look after AusAID and some said I was the Australian face of overseas tragedy. When a tsunami hit, an earthquake, cyclone or hurricane it was my role to help mobilise the Australian response. When travelling to some of those communities you couldn’t help but feel the despair, the consequence that rested very heavily on those that had endured nature’s fury. But one message that kept coming through everywhere I travelled was that to get back on track we needed to support the community and to support enterprise within the community.
We knew it was important to get the momentum, positivity and the sense of optimism and knew that to achieve this we needed to get the communities working again.
I saw this in Banda Aceh in Northern Sumatra where the tectonic plates had sunk due to the earthquake and every time the tide came in the hospital would flood. I talked with people about how they were coping, and what drove those most into a frustrated and despondent place was the sense that they couldn’t do anything about it.
Now what’s so important about what your community has done after nature’s fury and its consequence on your community, is how you all pulled together and I have the utmost admiration for each and every one of you, for seeing the way forward was about working on the challenges together, knowing that the community is at its best when we are giving our best.
Now this work’s continued today and so much of today is about taking that next step, now that the immediate response phase for many has moved into a ‘where to from here’ space. The community is starting to make progress in economic opportunities and possibilities for the future. Coming together to see how once again you can support each other is a very important part of that recovery and it is about the economy recovering as well.
You may see someone who has a business opportunity and think yes I can help them with that. Or a collaboration that says yes we can go after that market opportunity. Or you may hear about some of the fresh produce and outstanding food and offerings from this community are desired in China in unbelievable volumes, that maybe one business alone can’t meet but if a few of you got together then you could.
This expo is offering you the chance to gain new insights or as I call them ‘ah ha’s’ about some business tactics, strategies or use of technology to open up more possibilities for the future. I congratulate all of you for taking the time for coming along today. I know it can be hard for those who are time poor but it’s really worth making new connections when you can.
Keith has given a great outline of the measures in the budget but I want to share with you our motive behind the budget. Keith has described how paying your interest on your credit card can only last so long before the banks come knocking.
But as a nation that was the trajectory we were on and when you think about today, there are five people in the workforce for every one person who has retired. In the middle of the century, there will be three people in the workforce for every one person that has retired.
Our workforce and economy need to be performing on all of its cylinders to create the wealth that we need to sustain the quality of life that we desire and the promise of the opportunities that our country can offer.
How we are going to get there in my eyes is through small businesses and family enterprises. Over the six years of Labor, 412,000 jobs were lost in small business. 412,000 jobs were lost in small business during the six years of Labor.
You didn’t see the headlines of a car component plant shutting down because they weren’t union jobs, they were jobs one business here, or one down the road or in a business like the one my wife and I used to own, where those job losses were sprinkled but they represented the livelihoods of communities where small businesses and family enterprises are the economy.
If we are to recover and to secure those prospects for the future, we need small business men and women like you prepared to have a go, to be inclined to take a risk, to know what it’s like to mortgage your house and to run a small business.
That’s what small business is about and it is profoundly personal. It’s your baby, you want it to grow and prosper, and you want it to succeed so you put an extraordinary amount of commitment into it. I often say the difference between a big business and a small business is the degree of commitment. A big business may not succeed or an executive might be fired and it’s a little bit of an embarrassment for them, they might get a payout, but life goes on.
For a small business it might be their house. It’s like breakfast when you are having bacon and eggs, the commitment I mean. The chicken is involved but by golly the pig was committed wasn’t it. You know what I’m saying? And that’s the kind of passion that I bring to my role and that Keith brings to his role – to be the best Government that we can be so you can achieve all of your ambitions.
We’ve got things happening, those programs that you talked about including the SBAS program and how about a cheer for the Bundaberg Enterprise Centre for their work. They are delivering the kind of help and advice that we hope is supportive of your enterprise. The funding to create Australia’s first Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman to go to when you have a problem with Government, or a program where public servants aren’t listening or a dispute that you want to resolve quickly so that you can get back to the business of your business.
Unfair contracts, you know those take it or leave it big ones that big corporations drop on you and say this is the deal. If you want to deal with us here is the contract. Yet we know too often it is an unfair risk of transfer to the smaller party, where the wriggle room and choice rests with the bigger party. But that can impede peoples opportunity to thrive and grow their business because the rug can be pulled out from underneath them.
That’s why today in your community I am launching this paper which is extending those unfair contract terms protections that are available for individual consumers because the individual consumer doesn’t have the market power to push around and renegotiate a take it or leave it contract. But somehow the law as it stands forgot that neither does a small business.
I know when we were setting up our business, I had no greater capacity to tell my telco that I didn’t like some of the terms and conditions in the contract but it was stiff luck hairy legs for me. I had to take it or leave it, so I took it.
We see this in some supply chains, where big businesses use their muscle to push around the small players so this is again another step in what we are trying to do to create the entrepreneurial ecosystem, the environment within which you can achieve your very best.
Where you get the encouragement, with the support that Peter talked about, but an environment that says we value and respect your enterprise. We can’t make every business succeed but we can remove the red-tape obstacles that impede your success. We can tackle these things of near commercial thuggery that can bring a small business to its knees for no other reason than the big guys have the resources to push you around.
That’s why we are doing the root and branch review of the competition law, which hasn’t been examined for a generation. We know when Professor Hilmer did that work that Coles and Woolworths had a 40 per cent market share. Today it’s 80 per cent and if you are a supplier to a big business with fewer options just think about the freedom that you have to push your case. Or when you are told what it is you should be doing because if you don’t, you lose a crucial share of the market – these are new pressures in our economy.
This is why we’ve got my role in Cabinet, so that any major decision is made by the boardroom of our country. I am there arguing your perspective and this is why small business is now in the Treasury portfolio because that is where the formulation of tax policy, the way ASIC does its work, APRA, the ACCC is all formulated in Treasury.
We want to make sure that Treasury officials have every day, front of mind, the concerns and the challenges that you face. If we get that right we will see the renaissance in enterprise that we need to turn around those job losses in small business, to see communities like yours and mine and the livelihoods built so that people can contribute, live and be a part of the community and have a dignified existence because there are those employment opportunities. But to do that we need to honour and support your courage and your preparedness to have a go. That’s what we are trying to do.
Let me know if you think we are getting it wrong. Share your ideas and your insights cause we often hear about the economy and what it means for people who are employed. We want to make sure the community is good for those people who make that courageous decision to employ somebody or who are self-employed and don’t look for anything else other than a fair chance to have a go and to succeed.
So that’s what we are trying to do and hopefully we will get that right and I will get invited back some day as Keith continues to stalk me in Canberra and maybe also to escort more Melbourne Storm players to Queensland.
I am honoured to declare this expo open and to launch this Unfair Contract Terms discussion paper. I want to pay my respects to each and every one of you for your contribution to see this community get back its mojo, get back on track as being a highly attractive place to live and create wealth and opportunity. I am pleased to be able to spend a few hours with you today before I fly back home to Melbourne. Thank you very much for having me.