John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'll be frank about this: it's been a divisive time for the coalition government. As a Nationals senator, I watched on and saw my Liberal colleagues shed some blood. But, you see, your memory has failed. Do you remember the Rudd government followed by the Gillard government? Senators in the Labor Party were saying to me, 'We've got to get rid of that Julia Gillard, Wacka.' 'She's got to go,' they were saying to me. 'She's going to take us over the cliff.' And then they brought Mr Kevin Rudd back. Let me tell you this: time heals all wounds. That's a fact. We know the tailwind's behind the opposition now and they're getting pretty cocky about everything, but I'll give them a little reminder. Remember a few weeks ago when Mr Shorten went to wind back the tax cuts for business? Didn't he cop a flogging from the business sector, the biggest employer of our country? But they don't care about employing people. It was a pretty rough week for Mr Shorten. Of course, Mr Albanese was getting pretty determined and confident.

I predict that we'll have a May election next year. According to the Constitution, we have to have a Senate election by 18 May. When we go to that election, we will see the stability coming under Prime Minister Scott Morrison. We can see the polls. Yes, they're bad—I'll be frank; I'm not going to sit here and dream something up—but that's to be expected after a divisive couple of weeks. But you watch them improve. They'll improve when people start looking at the tax hikes by the Labor Party and what they're going to do to negative gearing. We've seen what they did when they were in government under finance minister Senator Penny Wong. On 1 January 2013, they brought in a tax law where if you earned more than a quarter of a million dollars and invested in a business it was no longer tax deductible. You borrowed money to go into business—no, they didn't want you to invest in businesses, but you could invest in housing. Now, of course, they'll do away with negative gearing on second-hand houses. Well, the mum and dad workers out there that have worked hard, reared their kids, educated their kids, nearly paid for their house and want another investment, a second-hand house, to give them some income in retirement won't be able to negative gear that. That's what will happen under Labor. Of course, if they do happen to buy something and sell it with a capital gain, a huge increase in capital gains tax will be coming.

Of course, the cost of electricity is the big issue. It's amazing: when Hazelwood, the coal-fired power plant in Victoria, shut down, electricity prices rose by 170 per cent in Victoria, 86 per cent in South Australia and 102 per cent in New South Wales. They want to cut down more reliable generation of electricity, reduce supply and increase demand. It will take us down the road of South Australia, the state where I grew up, where I was a fifth-generation farmer. See what happened down there with a 50 per cent renewable energy target—the cost of that. They want to go back to 45 per cent emissions reductions on 2005 levels. Even Dr Finkel has told us in Senate estimates—he told you, Senator Macdonald—that we can reduce all of our emissions in Australia but the effect on the planet will be virtually zero; miniscule. That's taking us down a costly road.

When it comes election time, the people of Australia are going to be well aware of the Labor Party's policies: their plan for a $200 billion hike in taxes; to tax the family workers, those having a go, who want to buy something and make a bit of gain on it by improving it or whatever; and to stick with their taxation system that does not encourage people to invest in business. The fact is that the private sector derives our nation's wealth. The business sector is where our nation's wealth comes from. They do the employing and they pay the taxes that keep places like this going—the public servants, the politicians and everyone else in the public sector. The more you stifle and pull back on the private sector, the more cost to our nation's wealth creation. We've seen that over many, many years. Of course, we have to talk about debt. At least we've got a government, under Finance Minister Cormann and Treasurer Scott Morrison, with the budget heading back to black print. In all of my life, the Labor Party's never understood what black print is at the bottom of a budget, whether it be the states of Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania—back in the early nineties—or sending New South Wales broke. It's always the coalition that's got to clean up the financial mess. That'll be the case now when we get it right, and people will be well aware of that come the next election, I can guarantee you, Madam Deputy President.

So that is the tailwind behind them. The wind is going to turn around, don't you worry about that— (Time expired).