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

I have the ABS figures in front of me. It is interesting to note that since December 2013, a few months after the coalition was successful in the previous election, close to 500,000 new jobs have been created in our economy—half a million jobs under this coalition government. We would have liked to have created more. We would have liked to have seen greater wage growth, but you have to put that in the context that we have seen one of the largest declines in our terms of trade in the nation's history. If we are getting less for our major exports—for our coal, for our iron ore—of course that puts downward pressure on wages, yet despite that, there are 500,000 new jobs under this coalition.

I would like to compare that to the previous six years of Labor government, where we saw the unemployment queues in this country increase by 200,00 people, despite a deficit. The government was spending an extra $300 billion of borrowed money to pump into the economy, and still the unemployment queues of this country increased by 200,000 people. Compare that to what happened under the previous coalition government. When we are looking at what policies we should take forward to get that unemployment down, how about we look at the lessons of our recent history to see what happens? We know under the previous Liberal government, the Howard-Costello government, we took 300,000 people that were on the unemployment queues and put them into work. We reduced unemployment. The queues were 300,000 people shorter, and yet under Labor those queues increased by 200,000. We could fill the MCG twice with the number of people that Labor added to the unemployment queues of this country.

Why is it so? Do you know what happened? During that period of time, I remember one of the things that the coalition government did. They lowered the rate of company tax. They lowered that rate from 36 per cent down to 30 per cent. I can hear members on the Labor side saying, 'Oh, that's terrible. They gave all this money, all this extra tax revenue, back to the big businesses. Isn't that terrible?' Do you know what history actually shows? Companies were paying more tax, not just in gross terms, but as a percentage of GDP. The tax revenue flowing into the Treasury was greater at 30 per cent tax than it was at 36 per cent. In our history, every single time we have lowered the corporate rate of tax, we have simply got more taxation revenue. Going back to when our taxation rate for companies was previously 49 per cent, we were only getting 2.5 per cent of GDP as tax revenue. When we lowered it down all the way to 30 per cent, we were collecting over five per cent of GDP as tax revenue.

It is quite simple. What we have to understand here is that government does not create jobs. It is government policy, it is government interference in the marketplace that takes away jobs, that creates deterrents for companies going out there and investing and employing. That is what we have to get back to. We have to get back to making sure there are incentives for a person that wants to be an entrepreneur and has their own capital on the line to say, 'You know what? I'm going to take a risk. I'm going to give this person a job.' That is what creates jobs in this economy, and that is why we need to look at what our corporate tax rates are. The Labor side say it is for big business; above $1 million or $2 million worth of sales is not a big business.

An honourable member: Many family businesses.

Many family businesses are not going to get that tax cut. That is what we need to incentivise, because unless we have private individuals in this economy prepared to go out and take a risk and say, 'I'm going to give this person a job and employ them,' and to add value to the economy, we will never get the unemployment rate down in this country. That is something, unfortunately, the Labor side simply does not understand. They think you can get in there, and government can spend more money and borrow here, and every single time we have seen the results: more and more people on the unemployment list. With that, the coalition so far has a very proud record on jobs, and we are prepared to stand on that record. (Time expired)

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