Mr CAMERON THOMPSON —My question is directed to the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business. Minister, small business is the prime source of jobs in my electorate of Blair. Could you inform the House of the action the government is taking to assist small business to prosper? What are the employment consequences of that action?

Mr REITH (Workplace Relations and Small Business) —I thank the member for Blair for his question. The fact is that prosperous small businesses mean jobs. When this government is in power and implementing our policy, that means jobs in the future. How do you create jobs? Good economic management is one of the first things you have to do. It is one of the things that this government has been providing. What else do you have to do? You have to get interest rates down. That is what this government has been doing and will continue to do. You have to get inflation down. That is what this government has been doing, and that means jobs.

Then you have to get into the difficult issues, the major reform issues. This government has been active in franchising—a huge area in which we want to see small business prosper and create jobs. We introduced capital gains tax rollover relief. We have said to small business, `If you do well, we want you to keep more of what you earn.' We have introduced reforms in unfair dismissal. We want to go further. We have introduced general reforms to the Workplace Relations Act, all of which are aimed at producing jobs.

We have introduced historic reforms, like reforms to the Trade Practices Act to protect small business, as recommended by the Reid committee in the last parliament. Not only have we done that; we are powering on with our agenda—tax reform, more IR reform, more workplace relations reform, reform for small business so they can give young people jobs and keep young people in jobs. We also need to cut back on the red tape for small business. We have started that task. It is a long, hard task, but we have a plan—as we have in all these areas—to prosper small business and to create more jobs. That will see this economy do better in the future.

I conclude by saying that we have a plan, because we know what to do. The other side basically has no plan, although in fairness to the new shadow minister, the member for Hunter, he said in his maiden speech—he said it; who wrote it would be another question, whether it was his wife or another member of his family:

Competent management of the Australian economy is the most basic prerequisite for jobs growth in Australia.

That is exactly right. I say to the member for Hunter that he ought to come down here and give a few of these ex-ACTU presidents a few simple messages about running the Australian economy.