Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Wages growth is at record lows and 80 per cent of big businesses have ruled out increasing wages or employing more staff because of the Prime Minister's $65 billion big business handout. Isn't it clear the Prime Minister has no plan to increase wages for Australian workers, and only has a plan to help the top end of town?

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

I thank the honourable member for her question. I refer to my earlier answers on this topic. The reality is simply this: just as the Leader of the Opposition said in 2011, if you reduce company tax you increase the return on investment. You get more investment. You get more investment and you get higher productivity. You get higher productivity, you get higher wages and you get more jobs. That's the bottom line. It was the case when Labor was in government and it is the case when we're in government. There used to be a mutual recognition that the laws of economics applied to company tax, and that is why the member for McMahon wrote a book about it calling for Australia's company tax to be competitive.

The honourable member has got to ask herself this very simple question: how are Australian businesses going to compete with the highest company tax in the world? That is where we are heading. We already have the equal highest company tax in the OECD, and there is a global trend to reduce company tax. The question the honourable member has to ask, and all honourable members opposite have to ask, is: will the employers in their electorates be able to compete for capital when the returns on capital in Australia are markedly less than they are in other countries, including, of course, the United States? It's very straightforward, and that's why the logic was recognised by both sides of politics, until economics was thrown aside for political populism by the honourable member's leader.