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

I thank Senator Fawcett for that question. As I indicated to the Senate yesterday, our economy is in transition. We continue to grow but we need to generate stronger growth and create more jobs to help us afford, as a nation, the important services provided by government. So why is our economic reform agenda so important? It is important to put Australia on the strongest possible economic and fiscal foundation for the future. It will help ensure that people right across Australia have the best possible opportunity to get ahead, in particular, young people across Australia. It will help to ensure that we are as resilient as possible in the face of inevitable global economic headwinds coming our way from time to time. And it will help us ensure that as a nation we are in the best possible position to take advantage of the many exciting opportunities coming our way in this part of the world.

As the Prime Minister often says, this is the most exciting time to be an Australian. To achieve this we need to ensure we are as competitive, as productive, as innovative, as agile and as nimble as possible. That is why we continue our work to take unnecessary costs out of the economy through our ambitious deregulation agenda. That is why we continue to look for opportunities to make our tax system more growth friendly, building on the abolition of the mining tax and the carbon tax and building on the small business tax cuts we delivered in last year's budget. That is why we continue to work to help our exporting businesses get better access to key markets in our region through free trade agreements with China, South Korea and Japan. That is why it is so important that the legislation to bring back the Australian Building and Construction Commission is passed by the Senate as quickly as possible—in order to boost productivity in the construction sector, in order to bring down costs in the construction sector and to help strengthen growth and create more jobs. (Time expired)