Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Let those opposite continue—but it was the Keating government that recognised the productivity benefits of employee share ownership schemes. I am sure the member for Casey has done his research and checked the record and checked what I said in opposition and he will have seen my support for employee share ownership schemes. He will also have seen the Treasurer’s support for employee share ownership schemes. And he will know that there are senior figures in this government who strongly support employee share ownership schemes but happen to believe that everybody should have to pay their fair share of tax as well. The two things are not mutually exclusive.

If this government was so anti-business, if this government did not understand how business works, why is it that there are so many measures in this budget that are supported by business? Why is it that business has come out and endorsed this budget and its particular measures so well? Why is it that business has welcomed our changes to the treatment of off-market share buybacks, for example? It is not something you are going to read about on the front page of the Daily Telegraph, but it is an important reform. It is something that business has been calling for.

Then there are our abolition of the foreign investment fund regime and the rewriting of the controlled foreign company, or CFC, regime. Why is it that business had called for the previous government, the so-called business-friendly previous government, to do these things for years and was ignored? It has taken this government to act on these things. They might have been getting around to it. Maybe another 10 or 15 years in office and they might have got to it—fair call. But we have done it in our second budget.

Our measures in relation to the foreign investment fund and the controlled foreign company regime will save business $80 million a year in compliance costs. This is a government which understands business; this is a government which works with business and works through the issues. These are issues that people have been raising for years and they are things that it has fallen upon us to do. If the opposition really supported business they would start listening to business and get behind the Australian Business Investment Partnership. That is what they would do. It is another sign of the opposition being completely out of touch with the needs of business.

Part of my job, part of the job of the Minister for Finance and Deregulation and part of the job of the Treasurer is to engage with business. I would suspect that there is not a boardroom in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane that has not had the Treasurer, the finance minister or me in it over the last 18 months. We engage with business. And let me tell you this: what they say in the boardrooms of Australia is that the Leader of the Opposition is not a popular camper because he is taking a cheap and populist approach to the crisis facing the Australian economy. The Leader of the Opposition is opposing the government’s every measure. Around the boardrooms of Australia they say, ‘Malcolm knows better.’ They say: ‘The Leader of the Opposition should understand how business works, and we suspect he does. So why would the Leader of the Opposition oppose something as sensible and necessary as the Australian Business Investment Partnership?’ They say this in the boardrooms around Australia all the time. And the reason is—and business knows it—he is not the Leader of the Opposition; he is the leader of the opportunists. He will take every opportunity to make a cheap political attack on this government and not do what is right in the national interest. He will not get behind this government’s efforts to support Australia through this worst global financial crisis. That is why the business community have written off the Leader of the Opposition as a waste of time. That is why the business community says, ‘Maybe we would be better with the member for North Sydney or the member for Higgins leading the opposition, because this guy just does not get it.’

That is why the business community looks to Labor for engagement; that is why the business community looks to this government to get us through this crisis; and that is why they see the current Leader of the Opposition as nothing better than a hypocrite and opportunist.

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