House of Representatives 31 July 2025
Speaker: Member for Fisher.
Andrew Wallace MP:
Like most of the members on this side of the House, we’ve come from small business.
Government Member: Like us!
Andrew Wallace MP:
I’ll take that interjection. Like you, for sure. Most of the people on this side of the House have come from small business: doctors, small-business people, carpenters or whatever.
When I make my way around my electorate of Fisher and I talk to small businesses, because the Sunshine Coast is, according to Bernard Salt, the small-business capital of the country, in my now 33 years on the Sunshine Coast I have never seen so many Sunshine Coast businesses under the pressure they are right now.
Whilst the Labor Party comes in here cock-a-hoop and talks about how good things are, they have absolutely no understanding.
If you want to know how times are tough, come to my electorate and talk to people in the main street of Mooloolaba, and see the shops that are closing down in the towns in my electorate. Why? Because small businesses are doing it incredibly tough.
They’re doing it incredibly tough for many reasons, but I’ll just pick two for the time being. They are the cost of energy and the cost of borrowing money.
I’ll pick another one. The cost of energy and also, I’ve forgotten what I was going to say, Deputy Speaker, but I’ll come back to it in a minute.
Speaker:
I’m not sure I can help you there!
Andrew Wallace MP:
That’s okay.
It really breaks my heart when I talk to small businesses, because, having been in that world, I know just how hard it can be. That pit you get in your stomach on a Wednesday night. You are trying to figure out how you are going to pay your staff.
For most small-business people, their staff is like their family.
I’ve been there, where I have thought, I can either not pay my staff or borrow more money against my house.
Virtually every small-business person in this country will borrow more money against their house because, for themselves and for their business, their staff is their family. They know that it’s not just the case that that family relies upon them. They know this person or people. They’ve worked with them for a long time. They know their families, and they want to be able to provide for them.
Energy has gone up since this Government has been in power. Electricity is up 32 per cent. Gas is up 30 per cent. These are real costs that are unable to be avoided.
Don’t get me started on industrial relations.
When I talk to small-business people, I’ve never seen the degree of pain and angst, and that’s why we are now experiencing more small businesses failing. More over the last three years than in Australian recorded history.
I want to retract that, because it’s not the small business that’s failed. That’s unfair of me to say that.
It’s the small businesses that have gone to the wall under this Government. It’s the small businesses that have been unable to keep their doors open.
They’ve done everything they possibly can. They’ve borrowed against their credit cards. They’ve borrowed against their home. But they just can’t make ends meet.
This Government either doesn’t seem to care or doesn’t know what it is like to run a small business in this country.
Ms Doyle: That old chestnut!
Andrew Wallace MP:
I’ll take the interjection, that old chestnut.
There are tens of thousands of small-business people who are working out how they’re going to pay their staff’s wages, because this Government either doesn’t care or has no appreciation for what it’s like to run a business in this country.
END
