Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I know the Labor Party does not take this very seriously, but people across Australia understand that Australia, as a trading nation, has been facing some global economic headwinds. People across Australia well understand that we have had to deal, as a nation, with the biggest fall in our terms of trade in about 50 years. People across Australia well understand that the economy in Australia is going through an adjustment.

Opposition senators interjecting—

Labor can laugh at all of this, but the Australian economy is actually performing very well in the circumstances. We are going through the structural adjustment very well. There is a range of reasons for this, some of which relate to structural reforms pursued by the Hawke, Keating and Howard governments—the independent Reserve Bank, setting monetary policy, with a floating exchange rate. All of that helps us to adjust to what is happening in the global economy. There is the fact that we have taken Labor's lead out of our saddlebag; that we focus on reducing the cost of doing business in Australia; that we have got rid of bad Labor taxes, like the mining tax and the carbon tax; that we have decided not to go ahead with Labor's bad bank tax; that we have decided to reduce company tax for small business, encouraging small business to invest in their future economic success and employ more Australians; the fact that we have pursued an ambitious infrastructure investment program; the fact that we have pursued an ambitious free trade agenda; the fact that we are now looking further at how we can provide proper incentives for innovation and further improvements to our tax system to ensure it is as growth friendly as possible so that we can generate the best possible opportunity for people across Australia to get ahead. You should be congratulating the government for having taken Australia back from the abyss that Labor— (Time expired)