House debates

Wednesday, 25 October 2017

Matters of Public Importance

Economy

3:30 pm

Photo of Michael SukkarMichael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister to the Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

It was his idea! It was a great idea—I don't think it ever happened! What about Fuelwatch? Whatever happened to Fuelwatch? But what happens in the Labor Party when you're the worst immigration minister this country has ever seen and you come up with absolutely crazy schemes like Fuelwatch? You get a promotion.

But to be a bit more serious about the substance of this MPI: the Labor Party take growth for granted; that's the problem. They think there is a God-given right for this country to have growth, that we don't have to work hard for it and that the government doesn't have to put in place policies that encourage growth. This is the position of Labor. I feel for the shadow Treasurer. I suspect he's a patriot, but every time good economic data comes out, he goes hiding. He can't speak about it. It's almost as though he's desperate for some bad economic data—and it's not coming. In the last 12 months, jobs have grown by 371,000. In the last 12 months, 371,000 Australians have found a job. Importantly, when we talk about inclusive growth—so called—315,000 of those 370,000 jobs are full-time jobs. A job is what gives people the best start they can possibly have in life. The Labor Party think you can take growth for granted. They think that we have a God-given right to all of the investment that creates those jobs without doing any of the hard work to make it happen.

The Labor Party think that those in small business just open the shop and the customers just roll in and the profits just roll in. Otherwise, how could you explain why Labor believes that a small business with a turnover of just over $2 million should be treated the same as Apple and Google and be denied a tax cut? In a number of interviews on television today, we saw Labor MPs evading questions about what they will do with these small business tax cuts. I think we know what it means. It means that, if a Labor government were elected, small businesses would pay higher taxes. According to the Labor Party, small businesses are doing it easy. Well, I can tell the shadow Treasurer, I can tell the Labor Party, that small family businesses fight for every single dollar of profit. Small businesses pay the rent first, the employees second, the suppliers third and the tax fourth. They pay themselves last. So, when we can give them a tax cut, hopefully they can invest and grow that business. We know that a lot of the jobs growth I have spoken about here—the 371,000 jobs in the last 12 months—has come from the small to medium enterprise sector. This is the place that is creating opportunity for Australians. These are the sorts of businesses that create the growth, the inclusive growth, that the shadow Treasurer talks about.

Words are cheap. Words are absolutely cheap. You've got to do the hard work to encourage small businesses and encourage Australians to create the economic growth that can deliver these opportunities. We can't take it for granted, and the Labor Party thinks we can. Yes, we've had 26 years of uninterrupted growth, and 17 of those years were stewarded by coalition governments. We've got a shadow Treasurer who often evokes the memories of Keating and Hawke. In fact, he jumped the shark by evoking John Howard a few months ago. John Howard's not as charitable about you as you are about him. The legacy that you are claiming is one that you are completely repudiating. The legacy that you are supposedly proud of, you are completely repudiating. You have now gone back to a pre-Hawke-Keating era of thinking that says, 'You encourage more investment and therefore create more wealth for Australians and therefore create more opportunities for Australians by having a higher corporate tax rate than our competitors.' That is plainly wrong. Page 63 of this fantastic book, Hearts & Minds: A Blueprint for Modern Labor actually says it. There's a very big heading here. It's in bold. It's not a particularly lengthy tome, but there's a bold heading here: 'Promoting growth through cutting company tax'.

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