Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. In the last seven months the Prime Minister has floated ideas on cutting every dollar of Commonwealth funding to public schools, allowing states to levy income taxes and increasing the cost of everything with a 15 per cent GST. How can Australians trust anything this Prime Minister says from one day to the next?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am glad the honourable member has asked me about trust, because that is what this election will be all about. Who do you trust to ensure Australia continues successfully to transition from an economy fired up by a mining-construction boom to one that is more diverse, more innovative, more productive, more open to the world to an economy that will drive jobs and growth to ensure that our children and grandchildren have the great jobs they deserve?

Australians know that they can trust the coalition because we have a track record to prove it. We are seeing strong jobs growth—300,000 last year and 26,000 last month—strong GDP growth, and business confidence is up. When you look at the Labor Party you do not have to judge them solely on their policies; look at what they actually did! Look at the RSRT: that was in the course of destroying tens of thousands of jobs—tens of thousands of owner-drivers put out of work, their trucks idle, their mortgages unpaid, their homes at risk because they could not meet their mortgage payments, and that was done deliberately by the Labor Party. It was yet another job-destroying policy from the Labor Party. Then you go through the rest of their list.

We are promoting investment; we are providing incentives for people to invest in new businesses, in start-up companies; we are providing incentives for innovation. What is the Labor Party doing? It is jacking up the tax on investments by 50 per cent and capital gains tax up by 50 per cent. We all know that if you want to have less of something, then you increase the tax on it. So what does Labor want less of? It wants less investment, and if you have less investment you will have less jobs.

What about the road to entrepreneurship? How does it start? Not everybody can get a cushy job with a trade union. Some people have to go out and work and borrow some money, and they might buy a truck or they might buy some property; they might buy a farm. The way they are able to finance that is being able to offset the losses against their personal income. That is what negative gearing is. That is the road to entrepreneurship for people who start off in life with their human capital. And what does Labor want to do to that? Put a huge barrier in front of it. Labor wants to stand in the way of investment and entrepreneurship. It wants to crush small business, and its track record is clear. If you doubted it, look at all those owner-drivers who have been protesting here in Canberra at Mr Shorten's bad work. (Time expired)

Ms Owens interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Parramatta will cease interjecting. I am trying to call the Leader of the Opposition.