Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am delighted to support the wonderful comments of the Attorney-General in responding to the questions from the opposition today. I was thinking to myself: is there a PFZ going on over the other side—a policy free zone? I hope it was not specifically Queensland, but it seemed to be mainly Queensland Senate colleagues. I can only reflect, as my good colleague, Senator Reynolds, would do, on what is happening in our own home state of Western Australia at the moment. Rio Tinto, in the month of June, shipped 42 million tonnes of iron ore out of Port Hedland. That is better than a million tonnes per day. We see mining exploration in Western Australia absolutely starting to lift again, not only domestically but also from an export point of view.

I have been in the United States and Europe during this year, and if anyone thinks things are bad around the world, they are the two Western countries where we see Britain has exited Europe, we see the EU in turmoil, we see Russia in turmoil and we see that most EU countries are probably in recession. We heard the Attorney-General responding to the questions with statistics like these: the economy growing 3.3 per cent. How many countries around the world would dream of that sort of activity? Of course, that is in contrast to less than two per cent during the Labor years. Let me remind the chamber that that was when there was a mining boom. That was when iron ore prices were $150 per tonne. That was when the price of oil was $150 to $160 per barrel. They are now down to $45 and less. This is what Australia is achieving. The other interesting thing for you all to reflect on is that this government, in the budget before us at the moment, wants to further reduce the company tax for small companies with up to $10 million of turnover. And who are the biggest employers in this country? Not government, not the big businesses: it is the engine room, the room that the other crowd over there know nothing about—small business.

Let me reflect on the Attorney-General's figures in the response that he gave to the Labor senators. In 2013, Labor's last year in government, there were 86,000 lousy new jobs, but in this year just finished, under the coalition government, there are 220,000 new jobs—almost three times as many. What the Attorney did not say, because of his modesty, was that the overwhelming proportion of those jobs have gone to women. So we now see an almost 60 per cent increase in the proportion of jobs for women.

Let me talk a little about that wages growth of 2.1 per cent that the Attorney-General mentioned in response to Senator Ketter's question. As the Attorney said—and I know this to be a fact; I have been in Texas and Louisiana recently—at least one member of every family in the city of Lafayette, Louisiana, is out of work, and in many cases both of them are out of work because of the downturn in the economy. But we have wages growth that is higher than in the United States, higher than in Europe and higher—I think the Attorney-General said—than the OECD average. What an enviable reputation we have in this country, despite the black clouds over the world economy about which I speak so often in this place. And the opposition is to be complimented if indeed there is going to be agreement on the omnibus bill that will allow us to get this budget on the road to recovery.

But I remind those here in the chamber that it was in 2013, leading up to that election, that our opponents said that if they won the election they would bring in $5 billion of savings. We said, 'Yes; if you are in government, we will support them.' We won the 2013 election. We brought those savings into this place no fewer than three times. But what happened to the $5 billion of Labor savings on every one of those occasions? Three times they opposed their own savings. So I will not hear lectures from Senator Ketter; or from Senator Watt, who I have not met before; or indeed from Senator Gallagher, the new Manager of Opposition Business; or from Senator Cameron. I will not be lectured by them.

Let me finish on Senator Cameron in particular, who tried to criticise the Attorney-General about the cash rate being at 1½ per cent and it being low. Let me remind you all that when Labor came into government the cash rate was 7.6 per cent—and what happened? Fortunately, Mr Stevens, in trying to control Labor's profligate spending, had the capacity to get it down from 7½ to three per cent, when other countries around the world were already down at zero or one per cent. I congratulate the Attorney-General and our government on our achievements.