Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the shadow Treasurer for that question. It comes from a political party that aspires to be the government of Australia and is going to jack up company taxes by 1.5 per cent, making sure that our rates fall behind countries like Mexico and Spain in terms of competitiveness. So I do not think they should be coming in here and lecturing this government about competitiveness. All of the evidence says: yes, we have to attend to our tax systems; yes, they must be competitive. Clearly, those on the other side of the House do not want a competitive tax system because for some time they were also opposing our tripling of the tax-free threshold, because they do not like low-income workers. They were doing that for a while as well.

Let us talk about competitiveness. Every single international study shows one thing: the most important thing a country can do is invest in its people, invest in education. Investing in education is the most fundamental thing a country can do to lift its productivity for the long term. That is at the centre of every international study that has been done in this area. But what is this all really about? Those opposite come into this House day after day and talk down our economy. That is a Trojan Horse for justifying their savage cuts to the bone, their aping of austerity from Europe, which they are not going to tell the Australian people about. So what they want to do is talk down our economy, generate a sense of uncertainty—

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