Senator SCHACHT (3:22 PM) —I rise to support the motion moved by my colleague Senator Cook to take note of the answers, if you could call them that, that Senator Alston gave in question time today to me and to Senator Crowley on issues relating to small business. What has become public in the last 24 hours is a cabinet document prepared by the Minister for Small Business and the Office of Small Business, which outlines a so-called new agenda for this government to try to restore its popularity in the small business community. The document is reported on in many newspapers today. I note that the minister, Senator Alston, is saying that the Federal Police are investigating how this leak took place. One of the things we all know in Australian politics is that, once the leaking of cabinet documents starts, the government is on the slippery dip to political oblivion. Senator Alston called it a cabinet `working paper' today. He did not actually call it a submission but he acknowledged that it existed and called it a `working paper'. When these things happen—when there is a leak and the content becomes public—and when we see what the government is desperately trying to do, we know the government is on that slippery dip to political oblivion.

This working paper, as Senator Alston called it—and I will use that phrase because he is the minister representing the small business minister—puts page after page of new proposals on industrial relations as they could affect small business. Most of the proposals have been previously rejected by this Senate as not necessary, as unworkable, as not required or as not called for by the small business community. Apparently, what the document does not do in all its endless pages is deal with the issue of further simplification of the business activity statement and the impact of the administration of the GST on small business. That is given a big miss.

One of the newspapers today reports that this working document says that, despite the previous changes made a couple of months ago to the BAS, small business is still overwhelmingly upset about it. Despite what the government has done under political pressure, small business is still overwhelmingly troubled by the paperwork required for the GST. In this parliament over the last three years we have seen the tax act go from about 2,500 or 3,000 pages to 8,000 pages. There have been 5,000 new pages to the tax act, all to introduce the new, `reformed' tax system—the GST and all its measures. How can it be tax reform and simplification when the tax act increases by 5,000 pages? This all requires small business to fill in more forms. You can imagine what would happen if a Labor government had introduced a measure that required only 10 per cent of extra pages. The opposition, the Liberal Party, would have screamed its head off.

So we have the extraordinary position that the only way the government thinks it can get some popularity back is to drag up the hoary old chestnut of industrial relations as it affects small business. For most small businesses—and all the surveys show it—it is not the issue they are concerned about. One of the proposals in this working document, as Senator Alston calls it, is to ban or limit trade union representatives from having access to the workplace. It is pointed out in the document that this is contrary to Australia's signature to the ILO convention which guarantees in a democracy free access to the workplace. The government has even had to admit that what it wants to do is contrary to our signature to an ILO convention. That is how desperate this government is getting.

Small business has been made the sucker, the fall guy, for this government. When I look at all the newspaper clippings that have come in today what best sums up this government's attitude to and interest in looking after people is what a Mr Peek, an employee of Tristar, said about his entitlements. The newspaper article states:

That sums up this government's policy. (Time expired)