Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) | Hansard source

The Australian economy is on the road and moving forward. It reminds me of the Mad Max scene with the V8 Interceptor charging forward. I find it interesting that Labor Senator Ayres should accuse us of closing down the car industry, because back in 1987 it was actually Button and his tariff plans that put it under pressure.

Since coming into government in September 2013, we've added 1.4 million jobs, of which 80 per cent are full-time positions. But, if we want to do the DeLorean story here and go back in time, let's talk about what happened under the previous, Labor, government: when every budget blew out by billions of dollars to the extent that, over the cumulative period of Labor's time in government, their budgets blew out by $80 billion—$80 billion.

If we're talking about our low-income workers, let's talk about the minimum wage for the last three years. In 2017, it increased by 3.3 per cent; in 2018, it increased by 3½ per cent; and, in this year alone, it has increased by another three per cent. So, cumulatively, over the last three years it has increased by a compounded rate of over 10 per cent. And that matters, because, at the end of the day, a good government always looks after its hardworking people. We saw that in the last election results. The battlers decided to abandon the Labor Party because they knew that the Labor Party had abandoned the battlers. The Labor Party no longer stand up for hardworking people. The Labor Party would rather sit around and blame everyone else for the world's problems. That's not the aspirational spirit of working-class Australians.

As for a decrease in penalty rates, I totally reject that. Next month, we're going to see the Saturday work casual rate increase from 140 per cent to 145 per cent, and, in the following year, to 150 per cent. For Monday-to-Friday evening work after 6 pm, we're going to see it increase from 130 per cent to 150 per cent by March 2021. So, on top of that compounded 10 per cent over the last three years for the minimum wage, that is well above the rate of inflation. It is to the Morrison government's credit that we have been able to deliver a pay rise for our low-income workers.

Another interesting fact is that in the last six years, under a coalition government, the amount of revenue collected in company tax receipts has increased from $67 billion to an estimated $95.6 billion in the last financial year—an increase of over 42 per cent. So we're going after the big end of town, and we're not abandoning the battlers.

We've also got some good numbers coming through for the trade surplus. In the last quarter, for the month of June we saw a trade surplus of $8 billion, and a current account surplus—for the first time since 1975—of $5.8 billion. So we've got a win-win. For the first time in almost 50 years, we've actually seen our current account position improve. That's because we are prepared to back mining, we are prepared to back coal, we are prepared to back iron ore and we are prepared to back gas. That's the difference between this side of the chamber and that side of the chamber. Those opposite won't take advantage of our vast natural wealth. They'd rather keep it in the ground and let future generations go without.