MINISTER BILLSON:
Thanks Joe, thanks Peter.
It is great to be here and to see John and his team doing a great job; building a business, creating livelihood opportunities and really adding economic vitality to this growing area.
It is the story of what the Abbott Government is seeking to achieve, to get behind enterprising men and women just like John. They provide so many livelihood opportunities. They are the driver of economic prosperity in our economy and they are the key to future economic success for our country.
Now it is quite a challenge we have got; 519,000 jobs were lost in small business under the Rudd Gillard Rudd Labor Government. That is more than a half a million livelihoods provided by people just like John that disappeared during that era of Labor.
We need to recover those jobs.
We need to put momentum back into the entrepreneurs in our economy. We need to energise enterprise and that is what we are doing every day, and today is another instalment in that ongoing agenda that the Abbott Government has been driving.
Today we are announcing measures as part of the Budget package that will support entrepreneurship and the start-ups of businesses in our economy.
We are making sure that the expenses incurred in establishing a business – the professional costs – can be immediately deductible as part of that business formation, putting cash back into businesses when they need it most; streamlining the business registration process.
You saw the energy of John and other entrepreneurs; they want to get amongst it. We don’t need a complicated and duplicative process to simply register a business to get it off the ground – that is part of these changes.
Also where a business is going through change, for instance, it might start as a sole proprietor but wanting to take advantage of the crowd source equity funding framework that we are developing, may need to transition into an incorporated business.
Now that risks a capital gains tax event, that can be a real disincentive for a business to shape itself up to take best advantage of the growth potential that it sees into the future.
These are some of a number of measures that we are announcing today, all about energising enterprise, supporting entrepreneurship, making sure small businesses and family enterprises can grow jobs, grow the economy, build on opportunity and hope in our nation.
That is what we are focused on today, we are focused on that every day and it will be a key focus of the Budget next Tuesday.