Senator ABETZ (Special Minister of State) (8:45 PM) —I thank honourable senators for their contributions to the debate on the Trade Practices Amendment (Small Business Protection) Bill 2002 [No. 2] this evening. The debate got off to a pretty poor start and there was only a marginal improvement with the next speaker, but a real highlight was when Senator Boswell advised us that he has now completed 20 years service to the people of Queensland and Australia, and he has done that in the most diligent and faithful way. I think they have been very well served by Senator Boswell, who comes from a small business background and actually understands some of the issues involved.

Before I move on to the contributions of honourable senators, I quickly want to bring the Senate back to what this debate is all about. The first speaker in the debate this evening was most anxious to talk about everything but what this bill is about, because of the embarrassment it would occasion him and the Australian Labor Party if the small business community were to find out the exact reasons why Senator Conroy and his party oppose this piece of legislation—which is something that small business has been asking for, which they want and which makes good sense.

So what are we talking about? We are talking about an amendment to section 87 of the Trade Practices Act, which would allow the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to bring representative actions in respect of contraventions of sections 45D and 45E of the Trade Practices Act. Section 45D of the act prohibits secondary boycotts undertaken for the purpose of causing substantial loss or damage. Section 45E prohibits certain contracts, arrangements or understandings with organisations of employees which affect the supply or acquisition of goods or services. At present, section 87 of the act allows the ACCC to bring representative actions in respect of contraventions of all of part IV of the act, except for sections 45D and 45E. The proposed amendments will not give the ACCC new powers in a new area. Rather, they will make it easier for affected businesses to gain advantage of the secondary boycott provisions of the act. The government recognise that Australia's one million small businesses lack the economic power of large corporations to take action when they experience unfair treatment. This is particularly so in relation to secondary boycotts. Without these amendments, small businesses will effectively be denied the full protection offered by the act and will continue to bear the costs incurred as a result of restrictive trading practices.

We as a government want to give the opportunity to small businesses to have their cases heard, by the ACCC being able to champion their cause by taking representative action. That is something that is allowed in this legislation—for representative actions to be undertaken by the ACCC—other than in this particular area of sections 45D and 45E. The Labor Party, because they are dominated by the trade union movement, are absolutely determined to fight this tooth and nail because they want the trade unions to have this unfettered power over small businesses.

I will now seek to address some of the comments that were made by honourable senators. Senator Conroy took the Senate back to Senate estimates for his contribution. I would have thought that, from his position, that was one of the most unwise things he could have done, given, as we all know, the substantial humiliation he received as a result of not even understanding the difference between a loss and a loan. But this is the man who comes into this chamber asserting that the Labor Party understand business practices and that they understand all things about small business. Take the tip: most small businesses do understand the difference between a loss and a loan. I respectively suggest that until such time as the deputy leader—and let us not forget that he is the deputy leader of the would-be alternative government in this place—can grasp the fundamental concept of the difference between a loss and a loan, he is hardly qualified to come into this place to hector us as a government about what small business really needs or wants. Senator Conroy has confirmed his incapacities for us yet again this evening. Any doubts that members of the Australian public may have had about the Labor Party being a wholly owned subsidiary of the trade union movement will have been removed this evening by their dogmatic stance on the previous bill and, of course, their dogmatic stance on this one.

It was suggested to us that if we were really listening to small business we would be doing something about the GST. I thought that the Labor Party had been through all this at the last federal election and had agreed that, as at 2001, they would turn over a new leaf, accept the will of the Australian people and accept that the GST is now here to stay. But the policy vacuum that the Australian Labor Party operate in allows the deputy leader to come out and make these sorts of claims about the GST, because there are no policy parameters within which he has to operate. I thought that that was one of the parameters they had set for themselves: that the GST was here to stay. It looks as though at the next federal election we will see rollback mark II. I look forward to it. I dare say that Senator Conroy and his colleagues do not. Because of the paucity of arguments available to him in this debate he had to grasp at a straw such as the GST.

We were then taken to the Yellow Pages small business survey. It is always very instructive and, yes, as a government, I accept we can always do better. In the area of small business we are very anxious to do so. But there is a telling point in the Yellow Pages survey. I would encourage them not only to ask, `What are the areas of government that concern you?' but also to ask, `Why is it that small businesses'—about 90 per cent of them—`never vote for the Australian Labor Party?' What the Yellow Pages survey ought to ask is: `What don't you like about opposition policies?' The first response from small business would be: `There are no real policies to judge other than that, if there is a dispute between small business and the trade union movement, the Labor Party will always side with the trade union movement against the interests of small business.' A lot of small business operators are people who struggle. They often are the recipients of back-up welfare support which their employees do not get, because the operators work so hard in trying to make their business run that they get family income supplement which sometimes their own work force do not need to rely on.

It is always interesting when somebody who, in his working life, has only been an adviser to a parliamentarian or worked as a trade union official seeks to hector people on this side such as Senator Boswell and me about what small business actually wants. Some of us actually have been in the marketplace. Some of us actually have employed people. Some of us actually have run businesses and know the difficulties associated with them. So for the Australian Labor Party to come in here pretending that they are the champions of small business is, quite frankly, a little bit rich.

I move to Senator Murray's contribution. Unfortunately, on things to do with the trade union movement you cannot get a cigarette paper between the Labor Party and the Democrats these days. They are very closely aligned and that is why I think the small business community is saying that, whereas it used to think the Democrats might be an honest broker and champion the cause of small business, unfortunately they are not doing that anymore, as witnessed with the unfair dismissal legislation and now with the secondary boycotts legislation. I simply suggest to Senator Murray and this chamber that there is no benefit in having secondary boycott legislation designed to support small business when surely the Democrats and the Labor Party know that small business simply does not have the resource to enforce the law against the perpetrators of secondary boycotts. It is all very well to say, `We all support secondary boycott legislation.' They do—knowing full well that it cannot be enforced by the small business community. So what is being put up is really a bit of a furphy in the exercise of window-dressing, saying, `Yes, we do support the need for secondary boycott legislation but we will so muzzle it to ensure that it will not be for the benefit of small businesses, which need the most protection.'

Senator Murray has suggested that, because of the way this bill is drafted, it is so wide that it could be used for any business; it is not limited to small business only. To a certain extent that is right. There is no definition in what we have provided as to what a small business may or may not be. But what Senator Murray is really doing is casting an aspersion on the ACCC that it will not exercise its discretion in an appropriate way when it applies its public interest test. This legislation clothes the ACCC with a whole host of discretions. It can do all sorts of things within its power. It seems that the Democrats will trust the ACCC to exercise that discretion in absolutely every area other than where it is going to champion the cause of the biggest multinational at taxpayers' expense. If Senator Murray honestly believes that—and I do not think he does—then he is saying that he has no confidence in those who run the ACCC for us. The hollowness of that suggestion is borne out by the fact that Senator Murray is willing to allow the ACCC to have the discretion in a whole host of other areas and accepts that those discretions and the application of the public interest test will be applied properly, appropriately and honourably; yet, for some reason that defies me, that it would not in this particular circumstance. We have another example of a political party grasping around for an excuse not to support this legislation, and the excuse, quite frankly, does not stack up.

We on this side of the chamber, the Liberal and National parties, unashamedly support small business. Small business is the engine room of economic growth and, more importantly, of jobs growth within this country. Some of us have seen what trade union boycotts can do. Some of us have worked on cases such as the Dollar Sweets case in Melbourne, a very celebrated case, and we can see what thuggery trade unions can apply to a small business. For the Australian Democrats and the Australian Labor Party to wash their hands of this situation is to be condemned. We on this side of the chamber understand what the numbers are in this place. We accept that unfortunately this legislation will be voted down but we will not be deterred from championing the cause of the small business community and all the mums and dads involved and, might I add, the job security of all the mums and dads who gain their employment from those small businesses. Today has been a shameful day for the two political parties that I have just referred to for having voted down the fair dismissal legislation, and it now appears that they are willing to vote down the small business protection bill as well.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.