Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Do you want to hear it again? More than 232,000 more Australians are in jobs than just a year ago. We have passed small and medium business tax cuts benefiting 3.2 million small businesses that employ 6.5 million Australians. I see the minister is here, and he wants to hear it again: more than 232,000 more Australians are in jobs than just a year ago. We have also provided a middle-income tax cut stopping 500,000 Australians from moving into a higher tax bracket. We have implemented the bank levy, representing a fair contribution to the community from our major banks. We have passed childcare reforms that will benefit around one million families. We are working to secure Australia's energy future through Snowy Hydro 2.0, which will be the biggest project of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. We have banned secret payments between employers and unions and restored the rule of law in the construction industry, which employs more than a million Australians. We have also defended 60,000 volunteer firefighters in Victoria from a hostile union takeover. We have continued strong border protection policies, with over 1,000 days since a successful boat arrival, and we have secured resettlement for the refugees on Manus and Nauru. We have also passed additional antiterrorism legislation to keep Australians safe and allow us to keep terrorists behind bars when they continue to pose a danger to the community after their sentence has ended. We have also fixed Labor's VET FEE-HELP mess, which paid people to study massage therapy for pets. We have added lifesaving medicines to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, saving hundreds of lives, and I know there are people in my electorate who have been benefiting from that as well. We have also fully funded the National Disability Insurance Scheme and guaranteed Medicare, and we have made strong laws to make multinational companies pay their fair share of tax. I think that is not a bad record since we have been in government. On that side, most of the people over there voted against all those great moves that we have had.

The matter of public importance today, according to the opposition, is 'the harm that will be inflicted on Australians'. I am sure I do not need to remind the House of the devastating harm they inflicted on everyday Australians during the six years of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments, through unnecessary taxes. Let's start with the anti-Western-Australian mining tax. There is a Western Australian in the chamber supporting that anti-Western-Australian mining tax; I cannot believe it. Those on that side expected a total of $22.5 billion to be raised over the first four years of that tax, to be spent on a list of priorities. As you would expect, that disappeared, but guess what: they still spent the money, even though they did not get the money in. In fact, it was broken promises and they were broken because their harmful tax was a failure—$22.5 billion they claimed and somewhere along the way the figure went into the ether.

By 2012, Labor had reduced that to $2 billion and not even a year later they projected it had fallen to less than $200 million. The great state of WA was even promised $100 million by Kevin Rudd at the 2007 election to boost the economy as part of his repair to the GST problems—problems that existed even back then for Western Australia. But I can assure you we never got the $100 million. That was typical of Labor: do not worry about what they say, just worry about what they do. That was typical: $100 million that never materialised for Western Australia but Labor reaped tax from businesses and the mining industry in Western Australia.

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