James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

If we were playing Senator Cameron bingo, we'd have a full bingo card after that speech: all the usual tired rhetoric, all the typical slogans from Senator Cameron that he wheels out every time this issue is raised. I was ticking them off one by one: 'trickle-down economics', tick; 'corporate tax cut handout', tick. He even called the government 'a rabble', perhaps his favourite phrase of all. The thrust of Senator Cameron's accusation in question time today, in the question he asked, was that foreign investors are going to get a better return on investment for their investment in Australia as a result of this legislation being passed. Well, Senator Cameron, on that you are at least in part right. Foreign investors will get a better return on their investment in Australia if this tax cut passes, as will employees of Australian companies, as will Australian shareholders of Australian companies, as will customers of Australian companies.

Foreign investors getting a better return on investment in Australia is not a bad thing. In fact, it's a good thing. It's a necessary thing, because, if we want foreign investors to continue to invest in Australia, if we want them to increase the level of investment that they make in Australia, then we want them to get a good return on that investment. They are not investing in Australia out of the goodness of their heart. I hate to break it to Senator Cameron, but they are not investing in Australia because of our weather; they are not investing in Australia because they like koalas or kangaroos; they are investing in Australia because they get a good return on their investment. If we can make that return on their investment better, then they will invest more. If they invest more, then Australian workers will be the direct and No. 1 beneficiaries of that investment. If we want to see capital deepening occur in our economy, we need to attract more foreign investment. If we want to see multifactor productivity in the workplace increasing, then we need to see more foreign investment. If there is anything this government can do to attract more foreign investment or more investment generally, then that's exactly what we should be doing if we are concerned about the number of jobs that this economy is creating and the wages that people are taking home.

I want to address some of the other claims made in Senator Cameron's speech then—in particular, his constant refrain that giving companies a tax cut is in some way a handout. It is not a handout to let companies retain more of the earnings that they have generated by fulfilling their customers' needs by selling them goods and services. That's not a handout at all; it's money that they've earned in the marketplace from their customers by fulfilling their needs with a product or a service. If we let them keep more of their money, and if they use that money for better returns to their shareholders, for more investment in plant and resources, for higher wages for their employees, then that is a good thing for the Australian economy. It is no handout at all.

A handout would be what Senator Cameron and his colleagues in the Labor Party are very fond of doing, which is taking money from people who are productive in the economy, from people who earn in the economy, and handing it to people who are not. That has the exact opposite effect of what you want to see if you want to generate economic growth. You don't take money from productive people and give it to unproductive people and expect that you're going to get a higher return on investment and expect that you're going to get economic growth. You allow those who are productive, who are efficient, who are profitable, to be rewarded for being so, and you will see more of that, if that's what you want to see more of.

We've also heard, as I said before, Senator Cameron's favourite bingo card phrase, 'trickle-down economics'. All you need to know about trickle-down economics is that no-one has ever described themselves as a believer in trickle-down economics. It's just a political insult. It's just something that the Left uses to throw at people who disagree with them or have a different view about economics to them. It is not describing a political or economic philosophy at all. Trickle-down economics exists only in the minds of Senator Cameron and his contemporaries.

Senator Cameron comes in here and says that this government does not have a plan or has an insufficient plan, in his view, to create more jobs and create more employment. Well, I'm very happy to stack up our plan against his plan and the plan of his colleagues, any day of the week. Our plan is to generate more investment in this economy and, as a result of that investment, for better wages to be paid and more jobs to be created. His plan and his colleagues' plan is to pass legislation to increase wages. If it were that simple, everybody would do it. If you could just make this country a more prosperous place by passing a law, then it would be the most prosperous place in the world, given the number of laws that we pass in this place. But passing laws doesn't create wealth. Passing laws requiring people to pay more to their employees doesn't create higher wages. It's totally artificial. It's a top-down central-management-style approach to economics that has failed every time it has been tried throughout history and throughout the world. The alternative policy, of rewarding those who work hard, who invest, who take risks, is the path that works. It works here in Australia. It works everywhere else in the world. If we implement it successfully with this plan, we'll see those benefits continue to flow to Australia.