Government Member:

A government member interjecting—

One day the member interjecting is going to realise that the promises you make actually matter—that the small business sector will judge you by the promises you make. The member for Hindmarsh in his motion referred to the Commonwealth procurement market, which is an incredibly important market for small business, as we all know. I was really pleased back in 2011 when the Labor government changed the procurement policies to improve access to government contracts for small business by introducing a basic contract suite which simplified the contract processes, dealt with complexities in insurance, provided appropriate insurance levels, simplified the language and made it much, much easier for small business to tender for government contracts.

During the period after 2011 the department continued to monitor the effect of the basic contract and by November last year they came up with a new draft to increase the threshold level from $80,000 to $200,000—and that is the change that the member for Hindmarsh is referring to when he talks about the government introducing this new procurement practice. It comes into effect on 1 July. It essentially builds on the 2011 model. It increases it to $200,000, because in the period from 2011 to 2012 alone there were 85,000 contracts with small business for less than $200,000. So it adjusts the level to the appropriate level—and that is a very, very good thing—but it comes after many years of work by the department and by previous governments and builds very much on the policy that was introduced in 2011. I thank he member for raising it today. It is an improvement. Increasing it to $200,000 from $80,000 is an improvement and better reflects the changes in the procurement market since that initial basic contract suite was introduced.

The member's motion also refers to a lovely figure that they bandy around a lot, which is that 519,000 jobs were lost in small business under Labor! Every time it is said I ponder it because I know that in the period of the Labor government, in spite of the global financial crisis, the number of small businesses in Australia actually grew by 39,000. So one has to wonder how in the period of the Labor government there can be nearly 40,000 more small businesses, yet we have a government that continues to repeat this figure of 519,000 jobs lost in small business even though small businesses grew.

A government member: It is a different statistic.

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