"There's no shortage of liquidity to support small business, there is no shortage of debt to support small business," ANZ CEO Mike Smith said at a Trans-Tasman Business Circle lunch in Melbourne yesterday."Small business is a higher risk business than a residential mortgage and therefore the cost of that debt is higher," he said."And there is often a misunderstanding as to why that is."The issue that I think Australia has is access to equity for small business. "Because it is unreasonable for a bank to take equity risk and receive a debt in return, but we don't have a deep pool of equity available to small business."There are a few schemes around the world and the one they've introduced in the UK is interesting and we have provided that to the Murray Inquiry as a really good way of creating eventually, private equity and capital funding," Smith said."Peer to peer lending, if you can create the incentive, the big problem is the tax system doesn't create incentive for people to put money into ventures - and that's a simple thing to fix and something we should look at very, very closely."