Clive Palmer (Fairfax, Palmer United Party) Share this | Hansard source

This budget, we feel, does not take up the challenge or take up the torch for what Australians really want to happen in our country at the moment. There are so many challenges which remain unanswered. The main issue facing Australians today is what Australians can do to regain Australia's status as a lucky country. Australians want to know and Australians need to know how their life can be better, how their life can be improved for them and their families, not, as we constantly hear, in 30 years or 20 years time but right now. Domestic demand is at an all-time low. Interest rates are at an all-time low, not because the economy is doing well but because there is no economic demand. Because our economy is spiralling down and shrinking, our people hold their savings in fear. We are all on Struggle Street together. It is our country, and it is our responsibility to do all we can to make the lives of all our citizens better.

Since the last budget, the Palmer United team in parliament has, as you have seen in this budget, stopped the co-payment, stopped changes to university, stopped $10 billion in cuts in social security, freed over 436 children from detention and 1,500 people from Christmas Island, assisted the government in resolving 30,000 cases in detention and come up with the idea of the safe haven enterprise visas. We have moved in the Senate to save the low-income super for over two million Australians and kept the schoolkids bonus.

When the carbon tax was abolished, we ensured that electricity prices were reduced by 10 per cent Australia wide. We moved 15 changes to Direct Action in the Senate, which all passed, and then we passed Direct Action. We have seen the results of our amendments in the recent announcements by the Minister for the Environment. We have saved the Climate Change Authority, saved the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and saved ARENA, and we have helped set a new renewable energy target.

We have fixed pensions for all veterans and ex-servicemen over 55 in accordance with our policy, and we have seen the defeat of the Campbell Newman government. During the course of parliament, we have set up, with the government, three new inquiries: into trade and investment growth, into the Australia Fund and, more recently, into the Queensland government. We voted to abolish the carbon tax and abolish the mining tax. We have recently introduced a bill on the foreign death penalty. We have protected maritime workers' jobs and proved that the government debt was not a problem for Australia, as we heard last budget. And we are happy that the Prime Minister adopted our policy, once he was elected, to ban lobbyists from party positions. We have introduced in the House of Representatives a private member's bill to kill off the GrainCorp takeover before the Treasury make this decision, and in electoral reform we now have pens taking the place of pencils. We voted in the Senate to keep Qantas in Australian hands and we have stopped changes to the income tax threshold and stopped the financial incentive to sell public assets, saved Australian jobs offshore in the gas industry and stopped the slashing of university research grants.

Australia is the only developed economy in the world to have recorded no annual recessions during the past 23 years, placing it alongside high-growth economies such as China and India. Australian government debt is one of the lowest in the world. In October 2014 the IMF estimated the Australian government's net debt would be 16.6 per cent of GDP in 2015, well below the 74.1 per cent forecast for advanced economies. Actually, Australia's debt is only around 14 per cent of GDP, less than the 40 per cent under Bob Menzies' government, which many Liberals would say was a highlight of Australian administration.

Australia's pool of funds under management is the third largest in the world and the largest in the Asian region. Growth in productivity is outpacing labour costs. Australia has enjoyed a sustained period of labour productivity growth, exceeding the growth in real wages. Over 23 years, with Australia's compound annual growth rate of 1.8 per cent, real unit labour costs have fallen by 0.5 per cent each year. There has been strong labour productivity growth of 1.9 per cent in 2012-13 and 2.6 per cent in 2013-14. Real unit labour costs have broadly remained stable, and the effective cost of labour has remained in line with productivity improvements. You would not believe that if you heard the rhetoric that goes on in this place.

Australia is No. 1 in the world in tertiary education entry rates. Australia's entry rate into tertiary education is at 102 per cent, including international students. This is well above the OECD average of 58 per cent, the USA at 71 per cent and the UK at 68 per cent. Australia's tertiary education rate is also much higher than South Korea, at 69 per cent. Japan is 52 per cent and China is 18 per cent. High rates of tertiary education underpin Australia's position as the No. 1 developed country in terms of real GDP growth over the last 24 years. Australia is one of the most culturally diverse countries in the OECD. The availability of multilingual, culturally diverse and highly skilled personnel means Australia has access to a workforce well equipped with cultural understanding and language capabilities to service international business in their own images.

Australia has the second-largest stock market in the Asian region, and the eighth largest in the world. With total capital exceeding US$1.12 trillion, Australia's market capitalisation is greater than China's, at US$1.06 trillion, and double Hong Kong's, at US$528 billion. It is around four times the capitalisation of the Singapore market. Australia's $1.6 trillion superannuation system is the fourth largest in the world and is a major driver behind Australia's globally significant funds management industry. The pool of assets is expected to grow to $7.6 trillion, or 180 per cent of GDP, over the next two decades. We should not tamper with the pension—we do not need to. Our superannuation pool is strong—Australians provide for their long-term retirement through their own efforts.

This budget is flawed. Reducing company tax by 1.5 per cent for small business will not stimulate the economy. Companies and small businesses have to make a profit before they pay tax. With such low-level demand in the economy, companies are not making a profit. Small businesses are not making a profit so tax is not relevant to them. Profit comes before you pay tax. With low demand and limited money supply, small businesses are losing profitability. We must create demand by increasing the money supply. People have to have money to buy goods and services for companies to make a profit before paying tax. Projected company tax receipts for 2015 exceed $70 billion. Instead of companies paying tax before they make a profit, the $70 billion should be left in enterprises' hands for 12 months to boost the economy. Australians can spend it better than government. This would create real demand and massive job growth, wipe out deficits and make our economy stronger—$70 billion spent by individual taxpayers gets the government 10 per cent GST each time the money is spent. We could have better hospitals, better schools and better services from our government. Money should be circulating in the economy, creating jobs and family enterprises. At the end of the year the government gets the $70 billion tax as well. If money circulates four times a year before government gets it, we get an extra $28 billion. It will cost around two per cent, at current interest rates—about $850 million—to implement such a change to provide an extra $30 billion or more in government revenue.

This budget had the opportunity—but failed—to stimulate our construction sector. We need to make the first $10,000 paid on a home loan each year tax deductible. Australia needs to again have the dream of homeownership. We can boost the construction industry and increase homeownership to satisfy demand and increase revenue for the government. By growing demand and government revenue, we could have the opportunity to reduce tax by 15 per cent for all Australians. The Australian taxpayer would have an extra $2,500 in their pocket every year, or $50 a week. This increase in demand and activity could boost jobs and investment in small business, and it is an opportunity which has been lost by this budget.

We need to stimulate our economy. We know our citizens can spend money better than the government can. We see that the budget and the government need to support the states. Attempts to privatise our schools and our hospitals, and turn people away, were rejected by the people of Queensland at the recent state election, and they will be rejected at the next federal election if the government continues with that policy. We need to stimulate our economy as President Obama has done in the United States and as Europe is doing now for its economy. We have to act, rather than follow the example set by Greece of constant contraction of the economy and reduction in fundamental demand levels.

The cost of health care in the United States is 17 per cent of GDP; still, 60 million Americans are not covered. In Australia, the government spends around nine per cent of GDP on health care and complains that it wants to make more cuts in the four coming years. We cannot desert the sick and dying. In the days of Prime Minister Menzies, our debts were around 40 per cent of GDP, which would still only make us 60 per cent or the OECD average. We need to use this ability we have to generate more capital and more demand, to push our economy to even greater heights than it is at today. We must do whatever is needed to be done to fix health once and for all.

The Australian government is the main petitioner of bankruptcy and company liquidations across Australia. As companies close, employees lose their jobs, the government loses group tax, people are transferred from gainful employment to Centrelink, company taxes are destroyed and services spiral down. Government must stop driving businesses to the wall. We must keep the system going to keep people employed productively. Transferring people from gainful employment to unemployment just guarantees misery. We need a chapter 11, like they have in the United States, where, when companies fail, the business continues—so families keep their jobs, government keeps their taxes and the nation keeps its exports.

As has been said, ignorance and illiteracy, unskilled workers and school dropouts are the failures of an education system in the past that bred failures in our social and economic system, such as delinquency, unemployment, chronic dependency, a waste of human resources, loss of productive power and purchasing power, and an increase in tax-supported benefits. The loss of only one year's income due to unemployment is more than the total cost of education to high school level over 12 years. Failure to improve our educational performance is not only poor social policy; it is poor economic policy. At this time, we need to invest—and the government has not done enough of that in this budget—in ourselves. If we do not have confidence in ourselves, who will have confidence in us? We must educate our children, as our most valuable resource. The problems that have been made by Australians can be solved by Australians as well, so we need to attack the issue of confidence to show leadership and vision for this country.

We need to support regional Australia. The government had a great opportunity to introduce regional zonal taxation but missed it with this budget. Japan has become the world's third largest economy by processing Australian resources. The cost of energy in Japan is more expensive. Japan suffers from the tyranny of distance and its wages are higher; yet Australia sells its mineral resources at $40 to $100 a tonne to Japan, they process it and sell it for $20,000, creating exports for and an economic powerhouse of Japan, while Australians in South Australia, Victoria, Tasmania, New South Wales and Queensland, and even Western Australia, go without any hope for themselves.

Minerals from Western Australia and Queensland should be processed in New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania or elsewhere in Australia. Let Australians do what they do best, using our natural advantages in the world so that we can provide real competition on a massive scale. No longer should we give up the future of our children in this country or the opportunities that we have to countries in Asia and others north of us. Some of those resources can be processed in this country. Because of the high cost of establishing plants like this—$6 billion or $7 billion or more—the Japanese, Chinese and Korean governments have learnt that it requires government leadership and innovation to make this happen. Yet our government has done nothing in this area for over 30 years and we have lost these opportunities in Asia.

We see declining unemployment in places like Tasmania and other places. We would have to grasp the nettle and realise that there is a real opportunity in the future to process our resources in this country, to return Australia to a large, highly skilled technological manufacture base. This is an opportunity that could have been addressed in this budget, as could the chapter 11 provisions, which were not. They are opportunities lost and forgotten for Australians, and I think it is a matter of great regret. We can only look to the future and hope the government in next year's budget will look at some of these things that they could have done today.

See this speech in context