Labor is making life ‘more difficult’ for small businesses

[00:00:00]Let's catch up with Liberal Senator and Shadow Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Dave Sharma. He's hosting a forum for disgruntled business owners in the Prime Minister's electorate of Grayndler. Thanks for Thanks for joining us, Dave. Is small business thriving in the uh Green Left sanctuary of Grayndler?

[00:00:20]>> No, it's not, Chris. And I I I've had an incredible level of interest to come along tonight from local small businesses in Grayndler, in the heart of the Prime Minister's own electorate, who've got a lot of stories that I've heard already and we'll be hearing more later this evening about how tough business conditions are and how the government is only making their lives more and more difficult.

[00:00:38]>> Would their Would their complaints focus primarily on the capital gains tax changes or more broadly across things like electricity prices, too?

[00:00:49]>> Look, it's across the board, Chris. I mean, in in New South Wales, small business insolvencies are running at about 5,000 a year. So, that's like, you know, 100 every week, right? Uh 14 a day. And they've got rising electricity costs. They've got growing costs of insurance. They've got a economy that's weak because of the government's mismanagement, which means consumers aren't spending. They've got complicated industrial relations laws. They've got high compliance costs, high bureaucracy, and more and more burdens being added.

[00:01:14]And obviously, the changes announced in the budget have only just dramatically deteriorated their outlook, the outlook for the economy, but the outlook for the small business as well.

[00:01:23]>> Did you let the PM know that you were dropping into his hood?

[00:01:28]>> I didn't I didn't invite him along, but he'd be very welcome to attend. I'm sure people would have a lot of questions for him. Probably not very easy ones, but a lot of questions for him about what he's going to do to improve Australia's economic uh prospects because at the moment, they look very grim, whether you're a household or you're a small business owner.

[00:01:44]>> He'd have to pop across from Kirribilli, no doubt. Look, I I I want to follow up on an issue that that you flushed out, uh Services Australia and the number of people working from home. You flushed it out in Senate estimates. We talked about it on the program last night. And I spoke earlier in the program to Ruslan Kogan, the founder of Kogan, the company Kogan.

[00:02:04]Um he talked he talks about how people need to be at work to be productive, to learn, to grow, to share their knowledge and pick up experience and the like. And he suggested some more questions about what sort of dashboarding uh people have when they're working from home. What sort of metrics are in place to make sure Services Australia can actually deliver the on the queries they're getting from customers. Can actually deliver the services that they're supposed to deliver. Do you Do you think they can do that effectively with so many people working from home?

[00:02:37]>> No, look, I'm not convinced of that. I mean, you got it Services Australia is like the most public-facing part of the federal government, Chris, or one of the most. You know, this is the people that run Centrelink and Medicare and MyGov and child support payments. Uh and the idea that half of their workforce uh are working from home and over a third are uh approved to work from home 3 days or more a week. That's over half the week.

[00:02:59]I don't understand how they can be doing the job of servicing the public as effectively as if they were in a workplace in an in an office. And the point that Ruslan made, I I noticed as well, was how do you expect younger staff in particular to get mentored, to get professional development, to learn from uh the more senior people in the organization if they're never physically together? I think this is why, you know, when Chris Minns became the premier of New South Wales, he basically ordered all the public service back to the office.

[00:03:25]>> And for good reasons.

[00:03:26]>> Just changing topic again, I want to show you a little bit of my interview with the Israeli ambassador last night.

[00:03:30]Have a look.

[00:03:32]Has the relationship between Australia and Israel ever been in a worse state than it is now?

[00:03:38]>> Well, it's I think it's no secret that the relations have gone down over the past 2 years. Especially we spoke before about the aspect of the recognition of the Palestinian state and which was taken by Israel as as an offense and and a mistake.

[00:03:52]>> Dave, as a former Australian Ambassador to Israel, do you think the relationship is in its worst position ever?

[00:04:00]>> Certainly the worst position in my professional lifetime, Chris. I mean, when I was appointed as Ambassador to Israel, it was by a Labor government.

[00:04:07]And I can tell you the relations between that Labor government, the Julia Gillard government, and the Kevin Rudd government with Israel were much, much better than they were under Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong. And that's because they put some value on the relationship. I think Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong have gone out of their way to damage and tarnish and downgrade this relationship. And I think it's it it's it's to the detriment of Australia's national interest, to the detriment of Australia's security interests.

[00:04:33]>> Thanks for joining us, Dave. I appreciate it. That's uh Liberal Senator for New South Wales, Dave Sharma.