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

to ensure that their employees stay in work and are able to have even the modest increases in wages that have been achieved. As they put their hands in their pockets, they have looked to this government to do what we did in the budget and say to them, 'We are going to take the tax monkey off your back', so we are in a position to be able to support them in their ambitions for their businesses, to grow their businesses and to support higher wages for their employees.

You cannot give employees higher wages if your business is going backwards. You cannot get a job in a business that is closed. The recipe of those opposite, the recipe of the Labor Party—yesterday, it was amazing that the shadow Treasurer, for the first time in a long time, did not bother to mention the national accounts or put a statement out on it, and he sneered at the idea that companies might make profits in this country. That is the nature of the modern Labor Party—to attack those who put their hands in their own pockets to run small and medium-sized businesses to ensure that they can provide the wages and the jobs that Australians who work hard rely on. Those opposite oppose the policies that will support those businesses to put more people in jobs, to support those businesses to invest and grow. It is not a modern Labor Party—it is a dinosaur Labor Party, which is wedded to that old ideology of attacking businesses in the absolute joke of an idea that they think that will help workers. (Time expired)

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