Dr WEBSTER (Mallee) (21:08): Small and family businesses are the lifeblood of regional Australia. They are the mechanic who keeps the trucks running, the builder employing local apprentices and the cafe owner opening the doors before most of us are awake. They are the contractors, the retailers, the accountants, the manufacturers and the farming families. They take risks. They employ people. They invest their own money. In fact, small business owner Mick from Mallee Turf wrote to me, saying:

We've worked extremely hard to grow our businesses and increase our turnover, but higher turnover doesn't necessarily mean the owner is substantially better off. A larger and larger portion of that money is simply required to keep the business operating and nine local people employed.

I think this is something that sometimes gets missed when governments talk about small business. Small businesses aren't just creating an income for the owner—they're employing local people, training young workers, buying vehicles and machinery locally, supporting other local businesses and putting money back into regional communities.

That is why I have a very serious problem with what the Albanese Labor government is doing through these bills. The government wants to impose a minimum tax of 30 per cent on the income of discretionary trusts from 1 July 2028. Treasury analysis shows 350,000 active Australian small businesses operate through discretionary trusts. Discretionary trusts can be used for income splitting. Questions about their tax treatment have been raised through reviews stretching back decades, but there is an enormous difference between tackling deliberate tax avoidance and designing a tax system that treats every family business structure as though it were inherently suspect. Discretionary trusts are also used for entirely legitimate reasons including succession planning and asset protection, and across regional Australia they are embedded in the way many family businesses have been structured over years or decades.

Labor's answer is effectively to give affected families a choice: pay the minimum tax, restructure or surrender much of the discretion for which the discretionary trust exists in the first place. That is not simplification. For many businesses, it's an expensive choice between three unattractive alternatives. It's expensive because of the change to the business and the advice required to make the change. All this is an imposition and burden from Labor, who have presided over 16 interest rate rises and, on Melbourne Cup day, likely another one if you believe the predictions of ANZ, Westpac and UBS chief economists. Labor are so economically illiterate they keep piling more and more socialist policy onto the economy until it breaks under the weight of productivity-destroying, aspiration-destroying and innovation-destroying burdens.

Businesses considering restructuring face another very real issue. The Commonwealth can grant relief from Commonwealth taxation; it cannot simply wish away state stamp duty. The government's own analysis recognises restructuring and compliance costs associated with this reform. In fact, the estimated additional regulatory cost averages at $141.5 million a year over 10 years. Think about what that money represents. It is money paid to navigate a new system. It is money that could otherwise buy a piece of new equipment; money that could be invested in expanding a workshop; money that could help put on another apprentice; or money that could stay within a family business preparing for the next drought, the next downturn or the next unexpected expense.

There is a further problem Labor is imposing on companies that receive trust distributions: double taxation—a concern raised by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, COSBOA, CPA Australia, Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, the Tax Institute, the Housing Industry Association, Master Builders Australia and the Property Council of Australia, among others. I will not go into detail here. The double taxation concern has been raised, and it is a fundamental problem and one the government needs to fix.

That brings me to regional Australia. The government says primary production income is exempt. I welcome that exemption, as does the National Farmers' Federation. But regional family businesses do not always fit into the neat boxes Labor and bureaucrats with no real world experience imagine. A farming family might own land through one structure and operate its farming business through another. It might also run contracting work. It might undertake tourism or accommodation. It may have diversified simply to withstand drought, commodity cycles, rising input costs or a downturn in export markets. The Albanese Labor government needs to be clear with those families what will happen to every part of their businesses arrangements under this bill. Farm families should not have to discover the answer retrospectively through a shock tax assessment.

I recently ran a small business forum with business people in my electorate. These people are not sitting around designing elaborate multinational tax minimisation arrangements, I assure you, Deputy Speaker Boyce. I am shocked to tell the House that some of them are seriously considering moving offshore altogether and taking their businesses overseas. These are regional businesses. The double whammy of a hard-left Labor state government and this Albanese Labor government is leaving small businesses so desperate for change on 28 November in the state election. If there is no change, they are leaving the state—if not the nation. Labor need to wake up and read the room. Mallee small businesses are fed up dealing with the high costs of industrial relations, power bills, insurance and stock, plus the immense challenges brought by labour shortages and cash flow issues, let alone fuel.

Added to that is another double whammy: Labor backing a banning of credit card surcharges without any guarantee of matching savings to businesses, and the ATO refusing to take credit card payments. For some Mallee businesses the surcharge impost alone is more than $60,000 per annum. Several businesses have told me this, and they are hospitality businesses. They are thinking about whether they can afford that new employee. They are thinking about whether their sons or daughters will take on the business one day. As I've said in this parliament before, governments should be making it easier for regional businesses to invest and grow, not burying them beneath outrageous cost and complexity.

There is another piece of history the government would probably rather Australians forget. We've seen Labor campaigning for a 30 per cent minimum tax involving discretionary trusts before. It was Labor's policy at the 2019 federal election. The Parliamentary Budget Office costed that proposal. Australians had the opportunity to judge it at an election. Labor lost that election. But how does the Prime Minister like to say it? 'We changed our position.' That is undemocratic—no mandate, but it's okay to change your position, and voila: problem solved. I don't think so, Prime Minister. That is why there is a separation of powers from the executive of the parliament. We, the elected representatives, get to have a say, and we, the opposition, hold you accountable for broken promises and policies implemented without an electoral mandate.

To be very clear, this particular tax was not taken to the 2025 election. This isn't some tiny technical adjustment. The current bills are estimated to raise $4.3 billion over five years. When a government proposes to collect billions more from Australians, parliament is entitled to scrutinise carefully who actually pays. It's little wonder that Labor hopes the media won't notice what is going on here and are sharpening the guillotine to push this bill through. On 15 October these bills were referred to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee, which is due to report on 13 November, yet the tax is not intended to apply until 1 July 2028. So what's the rush? Why not get the architecture right? Why not deal with the remaining concerns of small business and professional bodies? Why not make sure the interaction with state taxes and existing business structures is properly understood before hundreds of thousands of businesses have to seek advice about their future?

And here is a novel idea: why don't Labor consult before they push legislation through the House? Just because they have the numbers does not make it right. The rush is because Labor are trying to pull a swiftie on the Australian public and on small businesses. They're hoping there will be some sort of mental reset over Christmas and everyone will have forgotten by the new year. Small business will not forget, and the Nationals and the coalition will not forget. The coalition's position is clear. We oppose minimum trust tax. We will seek to separate that measure from other provisions in the legislation. If the government refuses to withdraw, the coalition is seeking to delay its commencement by 12 months, until 1 July 2029.

There are provisions elsewhere in this package that deserve separate consideration. Schedule 6 of tax reform No. 3 provides transitional assistance arising from pay day super. Other schedules make adjustments concerning capital gains tax and negative gearing, and the tax reform No. 4 bill introduced yesterday contains measures the government says are intended to encourage entrepreneurship and investment, including incentives for innovative businesses, changes to the R&D tax incentive, venture capital arrangements and greater flexibility around PAYG instalments. All these bills have been bundled together in one, like the pill your dog doesn't want to take, so you hide it in the dog food, or a very unpleasant sandwich.

The Nationals want regional businesses to have greater flexibility over the cash flow. The Nationals want families to be able to split their income, because the tax settings do not provide justice to single-income families. Families with a mum or dad at home helping to raise the kids is immensely valuable. You cannot put a reliable dollar figure on it. The Nationals want Australia's entrepreneurs to succeed. The Nationals want Australian researchers to turn ideas into businesses. The Nationals want businesses to invest.

But that exposes the fundamental contradiction in the government's approach. On one hand, the Treasurer grins and claims he understands that a thriving private sector drives growth. On the other, his government is constructing a new tax regime that sends hundreds of thousands of family businesses back to their accountants and lawyers simply to determine whether the structure they have legitimately used for years remains viable. You cannot credibly say you are freeing a business with one hand while wrapping red tape around it with the other. Small businesses do not ask government for special treatment. They ask for a fair go. They want certainty. They want the rules to be understandable and they want to spend their time serving customers, employing Australians and building their businesses rather than deciphering yet another layer of tax law.

The Treasurer, like his prime minister, wraps this ugly reform in the shiny Christmas wrapper of so-called fairness, as though 'fairness' was somehow a magic word that makes unpalatable public policy palatable. Well, fairness works both ways. A tax system should certainly require people to pay what they properly owe, but it should not punish legitimate business structures merely because some may have exploited them. It should not impose unnecessary restructuring costs, and it should not solve one piece of complexity by creating another. That is why the government should withdraw this bill.