Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The dialogue we are getting from the opposition benches these days compared to what has happened in this country for the last 30 years means we have never had a more separate and stark choice between government and opposition for 30 years. For 30 years, both sides of politics, whether Labor were in government or out of government or whether we were in government or out of government, had a few core beliefs about what was good for the economy.

The Leader of the Opposition today gave his MPI, which had things like the NDIS and all that stuff written in it, but all he spoke about for over half of it was corporate tax cuts. For nearly the whole time, he focused on corporate tax cuts. I will give a history lesson to the opposition benches. The two Labor people, or the two prime ministers, who began corporate tax cuts were Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. Bob Hawke and Paul Keating understood, as did the Howard government, that they wanted to provide better government services. Hawke and Keating wanted to provide better government services, and so did the Howard government, and both governments understood that doing that would grow the economy. We have had almost 20 years of uninterrupted growth, parallel with lowering company tax rates, lowering personal income tax rates, lowering tariffs and getting our economy to be more open and international.

Unfortunately, that has now changed. This Labor opposition has shown that they want to go back. We are not the government of the fifties and sixties; they are. They want to go back to tax and spend. You want to do something? You want to spend some money? Go and tax someone. Well, if you do that, then put them back to 80 or 90; put them back to 60 and 70. And do you know what will happen? We will lose jobs and we will shrink our economy like you have never seen before.

I want to read something from the Financial Review this week, from the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It says it has examined tax revenue data collated by the Australian Bureau of Statistics—so I hope we all still have faith in the ABS.

Dr Leigh interjecting—

I have read some of your books, and I know what you think about corporate tax rates, the member for Fenner. As they said, they thought you were from the AWU, not the ANU. So the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry says it has examined tax revenue data collated by the Australian Bureau of Statistics over the past three cuts in the corporate tax rate, undertaken—listen to this—by both Labor and the coalition government. I have given them that history lesson, as they may have forgotten. It says that, in each case, the revenue collected from company tax has increased within two years.

Dr Leigh interjecting—

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