Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is a question to you, member for Lindsay. You may learn something. When he cut the corporate tax rate from 49 per cent to 39 per cent, how much did that cost the budget? Let's go through it. How much did that drop from 49 per cent to 39 per cent cost the budget? The answer is that it cost the budget nothing—and that is why none of the Labor members would probably even know it. In 1987-88 we were getting $8.8 billion in company tax at 49 per cent. When it was lowered to 39 per cent, guess what happened? Corporate tax receipts increased. In 1988-89 they went up 16 per cent. The following year, they went up another 29 per cent, and the year after that they went up another nine per cent. So three years after the corporate tax rate was reduced the budget was not worse off. In fact, it was actually better off in company tax receipts to the tune of 60 per cent. That is the lesson from Paul Keating. That is the lesson that today's Labor Party does not have a clue about.

The other comments that the member for Jagajaga made referred to the energy supplement. I think it is worthwhile quoting from Graham Richardson, a Labor stalwart, someone who is Labor to the bootstraps. In his piece in The Australian today, he said:

Watching Question Time in the House of Representatives on Tuesday was, for me, as alarming as it was tragic. Mark Butler, Labor's Shadow Minister for the Environment, asked the PM a question on the supply of electricity in NSW. Butler's point was that power was cut to homes and to the Tomago aluminium smelter in a state which overwhelmingly relied on coal power and not renewables. The Opposition, front and back bench alike, roared their encouragement and support. I was alarmed because this open display of ignorance and stupidity by Labor paves the way for electoral massacre …

That is a former member of this House, a former member of government. He continued:

… it would indeed be a travesty if dumb ideological adherence to a renewables policy doomed to fail brought Labor undone.

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