Grievance Debate

FAMILY BUSINESSES

Mr MARSHALL (Norwood) (15:18): It is good to be back. I rise today to talk on the very important sector which is the family business sector here in South Australia. I note that yesterday was indeed National Family Business Day. This commemorates the important contribution that the family business sector makes to our economy in Australia. Probably in no other state is it as important as it is here in South Australia. We know that around 50,000 family businesses exist here in South Australia. They employ South Australians, they generate employment and they generate wealth for us here in South Australia. In fact, 70 per cent of the businesses in South Australia are family businesses. They are crucial and this is an important sector that we on this side of the house understand.

It is easy to identify some of the iconic family businesses here in South Australia. I think very few of us would not have heard of Coopers, Haigh's and Robern-Menz. These are the high-profile iconic family businesses that each and every one of us knows about, but there are many other family businesses that go about their work employing South Australians, creating economic prosperity for our state, that are not so high profile and so this is an opportunity for each of us in this house and each of us around the country to say thank you to the very many hardworking families that are driving our economy.

This is particularly pertinent, of course, to us here in South Australia with the recent announcement of the indefinite postponement of the Olympic Dam expansion and also the federal government defence spending cuts which mean a real hiatus between the end of the air warfare destroyer contract and the start of the future submarines contract. Whilst these are two extremely important sectors for South Australia, because of these delays they have put us in an unenviable position where we have to find out where we are going to create some economic activity and springboard from this bad news into a bright future.

The family business sector is rooted here in South Australia. They do not just jump around wherever the deal is best. They are here in South Australia and they are here to stay. They have patient capital and we applaud them for that. In recent times the government has recognised this and recently the government commissioned a Thinker in Residence, Dr Dennis Jaffe, who came out and presented a very fine report which was commended by the Liberal opposition. This report was entitled 'The future of family business in South Australia'. Dr Jaffe made 11 recommendations and they were excellent recommendations. Again, I say they were supported by the Liberal opposition. It is, of course, very disappointing to us on this side of the house that, after many years of having this report in the department, when you look through it now none of the 11 recommendations are currently in play. This is a huge disappointment.

There are 50,000 businesses. I asked the Minister for Small Business during estimates could he tell us how much of his budget was allocated to these 50,000 businesses. No answer three months down the track. How many of the 11 recommendations have been implemented? Again, no response three days down the track. He was not here yesterday otherwise I would have asked him these important questions on National Family Business Day. He was out of the parliament. Fair enough. He came in today. I asked him the questions again. We had six minutes of prevarication with no single answer.

This is an important sector of our economy. It is one we should be working on in a bipartisan way to support but this government does not have a focus on family business. In fact, not only that, they are actually quite disparaging about this important sector. Let me just tell you a couple of the comments made in this house by the minister and by the Premier recently. During the Holden debate, minister Koutsantonis made the following comment:

No-one at Holden inherited a job. Not one person inherited a job at Holden—not one. They all got it through their own hard labour.

He was implying that people working in family business are not working hard and they do not deserve their position. It was a direct attack on the sector. Premier Weatherill earlier this year said:

Many of you here—

referring to the Liberal opposition—

have run a few into the wall, and many of you have just inherited something from mummy or daddy.

This is absolutely unacceptable. Far from being an easy ride to inherit something from 'mummy and daddy', transitioning a family business from one generation to the next, let alone through multiple generations, is one of the most difficult things to do. It takes years of education, training, mentoring and support to transition effectively. We call upon the government to take this sector seriously. They are the backbone of the South Australian economy. It is about time they are allocated some resources to this sector and recognise them for the true champions of the economy that they are.

Time expired.