House debates

Tuesday, 16 October 2018

Bills

Treasury Laws Amendment (Lower Taxes for Small and Medium Businesses) Bill 2018; Second Reading

4:53 pm

Photo of David GillespieDavid Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Getting back to the bill, this bill reflects the DNA of the coalition government. It reflects the understanding that, if you punish people with taxes that are too high, their incentive to work harder goes. It's the same in a business. For those on the other side who don't understand the difference between turnover and profit, the profit is what you have left to distribute to your shareholders—and, usually in these small mum-and-dad family businesses, that's their wage. Unless you give them a reward for the risk of the investment, for the responsibility of providing employment for their employees, the whole exercise is negatively affected.

This is a very empowering bit of legislation and it's not going to run the country broke. The income from small and medium businesses will probably grow, which is the phenomenon seen in other decades and generations, both here and overseas. We're bringing taxes down, and those opposite have a track record of putting taxes up. What they're proposing is very, very scary. People out there need to realise what would happen to our booming economy if the other side were given the responsibility of running the Treasury. It would be a different world altogether. I support this bit of legislation 100 per cent because it's good for all of Australia and it's good for small businesses.

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