Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to be able to stand and talk about some of the achievements of the coalition and how we are working to make the cost-of-living pressures on Australians more affordable. The best way we can give a break to an Australian is to make sure that they have an honest, reliable, stable job. The coalition has delivered in this space in absolute spades. If you go back and have a look at our record, we are shifting more people from the unemployment queues, from those that are on welfare, into full-time jobs. I will outline what those achievements have been. More than 400,000 jobs were created in 2017. It was the strongest calendar year on record. The Australian economy is creating, on average, around 1,100 jobs every single day.

So how is it that, when a coalition government gets into office, we're able to create an environment of positiveness with the small business sector for those jobs to be created? The vast majority of these jobs have been full-time jobs, and 75 per cent have been in the private sector. In the private sector, I look at projects like the Bromelton Industrial Park just outside Beaudesert in my electorate, with a transport intermodal rail hub—over 1,200 jobs during construction.

During the election, you would have heard the Prime Minister and the coalition team banter on about jobs and growth and jobs and growth, and people were sick of it. They were sick of hearing 'jobs and growth'. But what I want to say in this debate is that we delivered the jobs, and we will continue to deliver the jobs. We were able to deliver the jobs because we got our economic settings right. The number of new jobs created last year represents nearly five times the job growth of the last year in the previous Labor governments—jobs and growth, jobs and growth. We will continue to banter on about that. We're working to build a stronger economy with more and better-paying jobs for Australians. It is those better-paying jobs that are actually helping cost-of-living pressures.

We're doing it through fairer taxes. How we've done it is by creating confidence and creating incentives. We've cut company tax rates for more than 3.2 million small businesses and reduced income tax for 500,000 middle-income Australians. That's how we're doing it. We're putting money back into their pockets. We'll fight Labor's plan for 150 billion new dollars in tax increases on pay packets, homes, electricity and enterprises. Company tax rates will be at the centre of our debate moving forward. Company tax rates, for us, are about creating those jobs, creating that opportunity and leaving the principles of demand and supply to take their place.

Affordable and accessible child care is also critical to parents who are balancing work and family responsibilities. From July 2018, we will remove the $7,613 annual rebate cap for families on incomes up to $185,000 a year. That's 85 per cent of families using child care. Families earning more than around $185,000 will also benefit from the increased cap of $10,000. That's how we're doing it. We're increasing the childcare subsidy from around 72 per cent to 85 per cent for more than 370,000 families earning around $65,000 or less. Almost one million families will benefit. That's how we're reducing the cost-of-living pressures.

The government has also announced an extra $440 million to extend the existing preschool program into 2019 to ensure that all children have access to 15 hours of quality early learning in their year before school. That means that over 2,000 of the little learners in my electorate of Wright will have the best start to their education, with a $2.85 million boost. That's how we're reducing cost-of-living pressures.

During the six years of Labor government, electricity prices doubled. Federal and state Labor policies have continued to increase pressure on prices. They have shortages in gas supply, unrealistic renewable energy targets and open hostility to reliable base-load power. The coalition government understand that we need reliable, affordable base-load power, and we're fixing this mix. We have stated over and over again that, for us as a coalition, base-load power will be part of our energy mix into the future. Our new Energy Guarantee will cut prices, ending subsidies for energy which are passed on to all customers, creating a level playing field that will ensure that all types of energy are part of the Australian mix into the future.

We're reducing pressures on housing affordability. There are clear differentiations as to which government is creating downward pressure on— (Time expired)

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