Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In the time remaining, I will make some comments about the budget. I think the budget was a good opportunity for Australians to see the multifaceted economic plan that we have. Of course, this starts with being a competitive economy, because an economy that is outward looking like Australia's—we're not isolationist; we're not trying to run a rust-bucket economy—needs to be competitive. We need to be able to attract foreign investment. Foreign investment is something that we have relied upon since the First Fleet. Being a dynamic, open, modern economy, there are many measures to improve our competitive position.

In the budget, there was the announcement that Australia will have a patent box system. There was an announcement that we would modernise the tax residency rules. There was an announcement that we would establish an ATO-style concierge service to attract and win that foreign investment. Because of some of the disruption in our region, most particularly in Hong Kong, there are more opportunities for Australia to capture growth from the region, but we can only capture that growth if we are dynamic and competitive. These measures in the budget do that.

Only in the last few weeks, the G7 met, and there's been a discussion about having a minimum company tax rate. As this chamber knows, there have been many attempts to try and cut the headline tax rate, for good reason, but they have not been successful. In an era of lower-tax competition, it is important that Australia is right on the cutting edge in terms of having the sorts of tax schemes and regulatory frameworks which are really going to drive that investment. We need foreign investment because, for all that people come into this chamber and say how much they love superannuation, superannuation does not fund Australian companies. If you want jobs, you need to get money going into companies.

The second thing that our budget does is gets taxes down. It obviously builds on our prior budget, which reduced the tax rate for small companies with turnovers of under $50 million. In this budget, we extend the instant asset write-off. For small businesses, whether they're making canoes or making coffees, their ability to access the instant asset write-off has been a real boon because it has improved significantly the ability of a business to make a capital investment. It's effectively saying you can expense your capital investment, which is a very good thing. It not only stimulates the economy but it also effectively delivers an asset to that small business.

We've also extended the temporary loss carry-back, which means that, if companies have paid tax in a prior tax year, they can offset that against a loss, which gives them a direct refund. The philosophy here is that the government has no money of its own. All the money the government has to play with it taxes from individuals, so the idea of the government giving tax back to people and back to companies is a very sound principle. One thing we understand well and truly on this side of the Senate is that most small businesses are just people who have an idea who are running a company. They could be running a sole tradership. Whatever we can do to support those businesses around the country is very important.

The third element is providing more flexibility for retirees, because we think that people should be able to downsize their houses easily, voluntarily contribute more to super if they want to, and use their super to purchase a first home in certain circumstances. It is probably well known that I think we should be extending that further, but the budget does provide a measure that allows Australians to take $50,000 from their super—it has to be voluntary contributions—to use for a first home. We've always believed in homeownership on this side of the Senate, always, because having a home not only gives you a sense of security; it also gives you a place to build a family and it gives you a greater stake in society. We're always looking for ways to boost homeownership, and there are now more first home buyers in the market than there has been at any time over the last 10 years.

The budget makes Australia more competitive. It gets taxes down, which is great, and it provides more flexibility in that very rigid superannuation space, which has been dominated by the dreaded vested interests for far too long. We look forward to people having more control of their money in the future.