Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Days after last year's budget the Treasurer said, 'At the centre of our plan for jobs and growth is a 10-year enterprise tax plan.' Is the Treasurer still committed to his entire 10-year plan, a plan the Prime Minister described as his greatest achievement? If not, isn't the government's so-called plan for jobs and growth just in tatters?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government is absolutely committed to our comprehensive economic plan to support jobs in this country. But the member opposite wrote a book—an entire book—about the reasons we should be reducing company tax. He used to believe in a lot of things.

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are other things in the book!

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He says there are other things in the book, but I suspect those who have read it would doubt that there was anything in the book other than his impassioned plea that we cut company tax in this country. The person in this chamber more than anyone else who needs to answer the question of why they have walked away from their commitment to reducing company taxes is the shadow Treasurer. This is the person who paraded himself as a great champion of rational economic policy, sitting at the feet of Paul Keating—who also said that we should cut company taxes. The shadow Treasurer even said that cutting company taxes was a Labor thing, a Labor stance. That is what he thought it was. When he had the opportunity to support the reduction in company taxes, to support jobs, to support investment, to support higher wages and to support growth—all things he knows are the dividend of that policy—he ran a mile. The shadow Treasurer is a craven policy coward. He is someone who will not stand up to this populist Leader of the Opposition, who will say whatever to whoever, whenever he likes, to crassly court a short-term vote.

You would hope that the shadow Treasurer, who holds himself up as the great professor of Keynesian economics, would stand his ground in the face of a crass populist like the Leader of the Opposition. But when he walks into that shadow cabinet room he withers on the vine. He cowers in the corner and he cuddles up into a foetal position, rocking backwards and forwards and saying, 'Whatever you want, Bill; whatever you want.' You cannot have a person like this shadow Treasurer stand in control of the nation's finances when all the Leader of the Opposition has to do is whistle at him and he just gets out the chequebook. What a coward.