PAUL MURRAY:
Bruce. G’day. Welcome.
BRUCE BILLSON:
Good to see you. Thank you for having me.
PAUL MURRAY:
Nice to see you. Equally talented, future Governor Generals, cabinet ministers, them all. Miranda Devine from 2GB in Sydney and also the Daily Telegraph. How are you? Troy Bramston hitting it out of the park as always in The Australian newspaper. One and all, hello.
PAUL MURRAY:
Alright Minister a couple of quick things before I bring up some of the concerns our viewers have had about small business. Guys I want you to chip in with any sorts of anecdote or experience you’ve had of the story as well. Interesting survey today, and I know there is competing surveys, one every day that says this is going well or going poorly. I was pretty interested today to see a survey suggesting 56 per cent of small businesses have not made an increased profit in the past 12 months. Doesn’t mean they’re going backwards but it means they are stagnate while everything else costs more. What’s your sense of whether that the real picture or not?
BRUCE BILLSON:
Yeah I think that is probably about right. Most are optimistic about the future. Most want us to get on and implement our plan because they can’t push prices up but costs keep coming up. So there is this margin squeeze going on and small businesses are telling me there are no sloppy profits anywhere and they are all hard earned. Pencils are very sharp. That’s why we want to take some pressure out of the economy, like the carbon tax and these sorts of things really matter for small business because things are tough. But there is an air of optimism which is quite encouraging.
PAUL MURRAY:
I imagine though, like all business, they turn around and say the best solution is can government get out of the way. What do you think that means?
BRUCE BILLSON:
There was 21,000 new or amended regulations introduced under the previous Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Government. So there is red-tape everywhere. Compliance costs gumming up the economy. For many small businesses they don’t have a compliance department. It is the proprietors that are spending more time on those sorts of activities. That’s why we want to $1 billion worth of red-tape out of the economy. Get those head winds, those constraints that are standing in the road of enterprising people using their have ago ethos and spirit to create opportunities and jobs. Let’s think, there are 2 million small businesses operating in Australia. Even if a small fraction were confident and optimistic plus one, one more person, what a remarkable change that will make, and that’s what we’re working to support.
PAUL MURRAY:
I’ve got to say I find it strange that when it comes to company tax there are plenty of small businesses that pay the same rate of company tax as colossal giants like BHP or any of the big media companies. I know you are not going to announce policy on the air here tonight. But is there any conversation that even happens, that gets on a whiteboard and never gets off the whiteboard, which says should that be one in the same?
BRUCE BILLSON:
There is plenty of discussion going on. We’ve got that commitment to lower the company tax rate but let’s remember only 1 in 3 small businesses are structured as companies. The other two thirds are operating through trusts, through partnerships or as sole traders. Now when you get a decent income you are paying way more than 30 per cent. So they’re the sort of things we’re focusing on. Let’s say to enterprising people there is no better place to start and grow a business than here. Those rewards and incentives are part of that and that’s part of our work.
PAUL MURRAY:
Troy you have worked in a Prime Minister’s office and you know that small business, and I have said this about both sides of politics, if you can nail small business and aged care policy you’re probably going to lock in majority for the next 20 years. If you can actually do those things well, even more than education or anything else. To me it always seems there is a list of problems, a shopping list of worries people have about small business but government isn’t either able to do things or we have a false expectation. What role do you think government plays in a news agency, a fish and chip shop, lawn mowing run?
TROY BRAMSTON:
I think anyone who starts and operates a small business takes a fair bit of risk on themselves. Not many of them survive in the first year or so, Bruce would know the statistics, so you have got to have that entrepreneurial spirit. I guess you always hear the mantra you want government to get off their backs. I think one of the key things is regulation, that red-tape, the forms that they have to fill in. My parents have been small business owners forever, so I saw those forms next to the dinner every night that had to be filled in. So I am interested to know what Bruce is planning because the Government is having the regulation repeal day coming up and a number of those regulations they are hoping to get off business, so there will be a lot of expectation there.
BRUCE BILLSON:
Look that’s right. That billion red-tape cut is crucial for small business. We’ve already made some steps in the right direction. We were blocked last week. I want to get employers, particularly small businesses, out of the road in handling the ‘pay clerk’ role for the government’s paid parental leave scheme. There is no policy justification for that. That’s $44 million of compliance costs that doesn’t need to be there. $1,800 per affected employer, that’s an example. We’ve tidy up the way ASIC interacts with small business in terms of transferring business names, we’ve got more work to do in the way superannuation is distributed and is sprayed out across a number of funds for a workplace that might have a number of employees. None of those alone are the magic bullet but what sets us apart is that I am in Cabinet. I’m at the adults table with a hunting license from the Prime Minister to go wherever I need to go. Where those headwinds, that Troy talks about, are making it more harder than it needs to be for enterprising people and that’s what is different about our operation.
PAUL MURRAY:
Just about that. I know you can’t talk about what gets said in Cabinet. But as best as you can tell me the straight up and down here. Do you sit there as one of many around the Cabinet with your collective judgment on a variety of things or do you sit there saying my job at this table is to advocate for my Ministry.
BRUCE BILLSON:
I very much start at that second position first. What does this proposition mean for small business? When we are talking about reactivating the Australian Building and Construction Commission, people say well that means this for big unions and big builders. No, no. The subbies on site are the ones that get done over the most. So I’m saying let’s think about how this plays out for small business with no power but to sort of cop the demands if they want to get a piece of the work. We can feed that in, inculcate that in, and have that front of mind to every decision. That’s also why we’ve moved small business into Treasury, because as small business people the decisions about the tax setting, the way the regulators operate –the ACCC, ASIC’s conduct, APRA’s rules on finance -they’re all shaped in Treasury. If we are going to get that ecosystem right for enterprise in this country we need small business considerations front and centre every day and that’s what my job is.
PAUL MURRAY:
Miranda you no doubt see the same groups of people in small business. They reach out to you at the paper or in the street or in all the different forums. They want penalty rates cut. There is an example today of shop in Kiama which is in the southern part of NSW basically saying again, penalty rates is the reason we’ve got to think about shutting up shop. What do you think about the penalty rates issue? Obviously there’s this incredible scream that comes from certain section of the population about it and an incredible fear that anything to do with workplace changes Labor wants to make the most out of it.
MIRANDA DEVINE:
Well I think you are spot on. That is what we are hearing from small business people in hospitality in particular, that the penalty rates are just killing them. My son has friends who work in cafes on Sundays or work in pubs, they’re getting triple time, a massive amount of money on Australia Day and so on. That is great for them but you talk about those 2 million small businesses who could hire a person each, they could at least hire a person each if they didn’t have to pay these astronomical penalty rates. In my local shopping centre it’s like a ghost town on Sundays. It used to be a thriving, bustling café strip with all the shops open. For a little while when the penalty rates came in the actual business owners would open up themselves and work on Sundays and then it wasn’t worth their while because the place was dead. Now it’s shuttered up. It’s like back to the 70’s. I think if there was magic wand that you could wave it would be penalty rates.
PAUL MURRAY:
But they won’t let you do it.
BRUCE BILLSON:
I get this as well. We saw 412,000 jobs lost in small business under Labor. That’s 1,320 every week and people point to a range of examples of why that’s the case. I mean the hospitality one is real. I’m on the Mornington Peninsula, that’s the dirty weekend capital of Melbourne.
PAUL MURRAY:
(Laughs) The Member for Dirty weekends, thank you.
BRUCE BILLSON:
Come and recharge you batteries on the Mornington Peninsula. But I travel to other parts and I talk to Bunbury, south of Perth about their vision, they want to be that retreat, that recharge area but they’re finding it hard to open. We don’t want the Parliament sitting their judging calibrations of penalty rates. That would never work. We’ve got an independent umpire; they’ve got the capacity to vary the rate of the rate, if I can put it that way. Most people say yeah penalty rates they’re ok in concept. It’s the level of them that’s the challenge and there is machinery there to fine tune that. I’m encouraging say the Restaurants and Caterers Association, bring forward that information, show what it’s doing to business viability, show that the calibration might be meaning people don’t have the opportunity to work or as Miranda rightly points out proprietors are working their tails off.
PAUL MURRAY:
When you say bring it forward. Do you want people to throw things at your office on their way to the dirty weekend?
BRUCE BILLSON:
My home base is at Frankston and I am used to people giving me spirited input. I’m in a marginal seat so I know half the electorate didn’t vote for me but they have me back. There is a process through Fair Work to say look there is a modern award review going on. The machinery is there to present the evidence. So if you go to Gippsland on a weekend it’s hard to get petrol after 9 o’clock at night. Pharmacies are finding it hard to open because it is expensive to have the staff on deck. There is a detriment, but that needs to be presented to the commission and I think we need boarder conversation in the community to see what the problem is and what the response is. But the machinery is in the law there now and we’re encouraging people to engage with that existing machinery that is in the current law whilst we move to that Productivity Commission review that says does this current regime actually work for the nation and its future.
PAUL MURRAY:
Alright. There’s Ministerial websites and all the rest of it, we’ll plug those shortly. I wanted to get onto the dirty tricks stuff that goes into the letterbox first. Get your opinion before you go here. Once again the image that was put out there of a Liberal candidate in South Australia. Now once again can you can you trust Habib, was what was there. I showed you before what is a brief potted history of terrible stuff that’s turned up. Yes, there was the Jackie Kelly stuff that was in Lindsay back in 96. But that stuff I’ve shown there is literally from the past 5 years. Steven Marshall had a little to say about this today, have a look.
STEVEN MARSHALL:
There is no place for racism in South Australia politics. There’s no place for racism in Australia. I just can’t believe that the Premier would stand by that material.
PAUL MURRAY:
So what does Jay Weatherill have to say about it all? Well frankly not very much.
JAY WEATHERILL:
This is just pretend offense to try and distract attention from the real issues at stake at this election. People don’t care about this sort of nonsense. What they want to know is the answers to the bigger questions that actually affect their life.
PAUL MURRAY:
Now Miranda. It’s interesting what the Premier just had to say but this is a consistent level of attack. This stuff is just crap.
MIRANDA DEVINE:
It’s what you do when you’ve got nothing else, you’ve got no argument and you’re desperate. I think it’s hilarious that Jay Weatherill that is the sort of captain of political correctness is now just brushing that under the carpet, he’s not even saying it’s terrible.
PAUL MURRAY:
This is the thing from me. Troy, I don’t know is it standard thing that is happening, can you trust – insert person’s name, all over South Australia. Is it something that’s specific here? Just again this tactic, where I am pretty sure head office doesn’t approve this stuff but someone somewhere along the line thinks this sort of smartarse beahviour is ok.
TROY BRAMSTON:
It looks pretty professionally done and it did look like it was trying to touch a racist cord in the community and that is reprehensible. The idea that one side of politics has clean hands and the others got dirty hands is rubbish. You mentioned before this happened in Jackie Kelly’s electorate where her husband was busted by the cops doing this in 2007. In 2001 the Liberal Party we busted in the federal seat of Richmond disturbing a flyer saying there would be refugees living inside caravan parks. So look its happened on both sides of politics, it’s no good. Nobody should be defending it. But the idea that one side is better than the other is just rubbish.
PAUL MURRAY:
Alright ok. But the idea of what I’ve put forward over the past couple of years, particularly at the state elections. When you are running how can you compete against the mystery that gets put in somebodies letterbox.
BRUCE BILLSON:
It’s a shabby political tactic. It’s influenced by inference. It demeans the democracy. We as a nation get the democracy we deserve. Don’t reward this crap. We have a term for it, its excrement sheet, I can’t say exactly what’s it’s called. We work out what are we going to do if someone says you know I should be 6 foot 3 but I’m not or as what happened to me in an election campaign, someone put up a mimic website where locust plagues and every piece of tragedy was my fault. Then I got the ultimate slap for men of our age, if I could say that, the last election was time for a fresh face. What’s wrong with this face? Nothing about my policy, nothing about my advocacy, nothing about my plan. Let’s not reward that. We get the politics and the politicians we deserve, lets rise above that and I say the electorate do the right thing for South Australia, get it on track and change the government, do the same thing in Tasmania and vote wisely on the Western Australian Senate election.
TROY BRAMSTON:
Can I just add Paul that Bruce is absolutely right. That kind of behaviour should not be rewarded. But the sad reality is that negative campaigning works. This will have an impact but he is right and it should be called out and it should be denounced whenever it happens on either side of politics.
PAUL MURRAY:
What about my idea there should be some recompense here for your ability to go and do defamation or something under the electoral act post an election? Because obviously if you’re the person who’s lost its hard to work out who is the person who actually stuck all of the posters. To me Miranda it seems like, as part of our inevitable chat about the electorate system it wouldn’t be bad if someone had recompense to around and say that flyer was complete bull. Not just a little twist but making it out to be corrupt.
MIRANDA DEVINE:
Are you saying suing?
PAUL MURRAY:
I think so.
MIRANDA DEVINE:
We’ve got defamation laws and so on anyway. I don’t think you need new laws. We all agree that these kinds of sheets are no good but for instance in Ray King’s case he was a terrific candidate but he didn’t do enough to defend himself. If he had come out and spoken frankly about his career as a policeman he could have turned that into a positive. It was actually an opportunity where the spot light shone on him for the wrong reasons but I think that’s what a politician’s job is. It’s part of this thing that we do in the electorate that for one way or the other an election is about testing a politicians character and they either pass or they fail. So in the end I’m not in favour of negative campaigning and dishonest campaigning in the end you get the candidates that you should because if you can’t handle the heat you get out of the kitchen.
BRUCE BILLSON:
There’s also an issue around what does redress look like? If after the election there’s some shouting this was unreasonable this needs to be corrected. The contest is about securing the opportunity to govern to lead to implement policies. The redress is - do you rerun that again? That’s the challenge so even if there was a monetary penalty that’s not why people are engaged in the political process. So the redress becomes a really big challenge. The thing is expect the best and live to the standards you hope others will apply and the electorate will decide if you’re handy to have around or not.
PAUL MURRAY:
Bruce once again mate, nice to see you. All the best and we’ll talk again very soon. Hello to his Mrs who I know is a big fan of the show.