Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

and the member interjecting back there should know something about innovation, but instead he completely opposes the National Broadband Network. We are investing in innovation by converting the 150 per cent R&D tax concession into a direct payment, which is directly useful to small businesses to start up companies.

We are investing in infrastructure, after that infrastructure drought of the previous government. The government’s $22.5 billion nation-building plan for the future, which was announced in the 2009-10 budget, includes an investment of $8½ billion in expanding Australia’s transport networks—our roads and rail infrastructure. And, of course, we are opening the economy wider to competition and cutting back on the wasteful and duplicative regulation that has created in Australia not one single market but up to eight markets, and that is by reforming business regulation in this country. That is something that the previous coalition never did, and it got to the point where the Business Council of Australia described, in relation to the previous coalition government, the ‘creeping reregulation of business’. Then they said, ‘We will do something about this business regulation.’ So they went to COAG. Katie Lahey from the Business Council of Australia was talking about the 10 regulatory hotspots they were supposed to be working on and she said, ‘They must have been so hot they burned a hole through the paper and it fell to the floor and we have never seen them since.’ That is the neglect of the previous government. What we are doing is reforming in 27 different areas of business regulation, with 12 of those already completed. These are the sorts of reforms that we are investing in. We are ensuring, with a two-speed economy, that we ease the capacity constraints in our ports by investing in infrastructure. Some of that investment will come out of the mining tax, which again is opposed by the coalition.

Coalition members in the last few days have been saying, ‘This terrible economic report out from the OECD completely damns the National Broadband Network.’ Let us have a look at what it actually says about the National Broadband Network:

Management of the new network by a public enterprise not involved in commercial activities ensures that private operators accessing the NBN will each get fair treatment on the basis of uniform nationwide pricing. Lastly, the government’s programme will avoid the risk of a geographic digital divide insofar as it will cover the entire population. Public involvement could be important where private firms are not prepared to invest if they were compelled to make the networks available to their competitors. What is more, if private capital were deployed it would probably be done gradually and limited, at least at first, to the most densely populated areas.

That is a description of the 20 plans that the coalition have hatched. They never implemented one in 12 years of government and have never been able to stick to one in three and a bit years of opposition—20 different plans, all designed to deprive regional Australia of high-quality, high-speed broadband.

While we are on the OECD report, it goes on to say that under this government the rise in unemployment was relatively modest, partly because many firms reduced hours of work rather than jobs to forestall potential skills shortages which had occurred in the past. What it is describing here is a flexible labour market—that is, under the legislation where we tore up Work Choices and introduced instead a fair but flexible industrial relations system. On the stimulus, which is criticised again by the opposition leader today and has been previously, he said that we should not have gone into deficit at all. It would have devastated jobs in Australia if there had been no deficit, because up to $200 billion was wiped off the revenue. Presumably, the Leader of the Opposition’s policy prescription, when you lose $200 billion, is to find $200 billion in cuts. That would have devastated the Australian economy.

But he is never true to his word, because when he goes to the election what does he do? He brings to the election, on polling day, an $11 billion black hole. Here is an opposition leader who says, ‘We, the coalition, are for lower taxes.’ If you look at taxation as a share of GDP, they were, between 2002 and 2007, the highest-taxing government in Australia’s history. And what is the centrepiece of his election policy? It is paid parental leave funded by a great big new tax on everything you buy.

This is the truth: the coalition always talks about cutting taxes but never does it. They are the champions of higher taxation, they are complete frauds and they are sloganeers. In a few short words: go back to your choirs and go back to your recitation, because we will get on with the economic reform program that this country deserves.

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