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

The sanctimony from the other side is palpable. The member for McMahon, a man who has written books about certain things, will get up and talk about the debt and the rising debt, and have a go at us about our debt management when he himself said that if they won government at the last election debt would go higher. I think he thought it would work out to be about $16 billion to $17 billion higher. So the sanctimony of it is ridiculous.

The other thing that he has also written books about is the importance of a competitive tax rate. If you believe the rantings of that side of politics, why don't we put the company tax rate up to 90 per cent? Why don't we put tax rates up to get more money? Labor of the past—as in the Hawke-Keating type of governments—and the Howard-Costello Liberal-National governments understood that for every public dollar that we want to spend on health, education, welfare, defence or any other thing that we should do as a government it has to come from a healthy private sector—one that is growing, one that is competitive and one that we can, therefore, know is healthy. Go and speak to your luminary past leaders like Hawke and Keating. They knew that to have a healthy private sector you have to have a competitive tax rate—more so now more than ever because of how global and how inter-traded a lot of companies are, and how even small companies have competitive pressures from overseas.

I could go through and quote for you how many countries have a lower tax rate than ours, and that is why we need to do that to remain competitive. There have been many times that I have quoted it before—and I will not do it again—as well have others in this chamber. In the past, when we have cut company tax rates, within two years we have been collecting more tax at the lower rate than the higher rate, because the private sector is getting healthier. So we have a great policy coming in on 1 July.

We know that that side does not like small business. We know that they do not understand small business. That is why the 3.2 million small businesses in this country that employ—

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