Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I notice that the Acting Deputy Speaker is a member of our political opponents' team, and our political opponents, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, are responsible for leaving a massive debt legacy which we have to repay, and in the most recent budget, of which the measures in this bill form part, we are making an effort to pay back some of that debt. Nearly $300 billion will be paid back over the next 10 years, reducing the interest bill for the Australian people by around $16 billion a year. That is an extremely significant inroad into the mountain of debt that we were left. If you want to make spending commitments around Gonski or the National Disability Insurance Scheme or to put in place new major road projects, you need to remove some of this debt burden. You need to pay back some of the interest bill on that debt which currently stands at $1 billion every month. So we have had to take tough decisions, and we are prepared to wear some criticisms for those because we know it is in the long-term interests of the Australian people.

We do want to increase the competitiveness of our manufacturing industry in this country, because it is an important sector. The member for Bendigo spoke in opposition to this bill—well, she knows about the Bushmaster vehicles which have been a great product coming out of her own electorate, and that is because they are innovative, and that is because they are seeking export markets, particularly in Asia, and that is because we, as a government, are trying to create an environment which is conducive to that form of business.

So we are going to reduce the overall tax burden by removing the carbon tax and the mining tax and by cutting company tax. We are cutting a billion dollars a year in red and green tape right across the economy, to help make our manufacturing industry more profitable and more competitive, and we are looking for opportunities to reach free trade agreements with our major trading partners so as to open new export markets for our businesses—that is how we go about creating the millions of new jobs that we want.

We have a perfect role model for our approach to improving the economy, and that was the legacy of the Howard-Costello years, which gave us more than two million new jobs, which gave our country an increase of more than 20 per cent in real wages, and which brought unemployment and inflation down to the lowest level in decades. That was the record of the last coalition government. And now the Abbott coalition government, with the hard work of our Treasurer, the member for North Sydney, will go about this job of paying back Labor's debt. So we have taken the tough decisions, and one of the tough decisions is in the bill before us, but it will give us that $25 million saving which is so important to paying back Labor's debt.

I also want to point out to the House that we are closing some of these TCF programs but we are also putting in place a $484 million new Entrepreneurs' Infrastructure Program, which will be conducted through a single business service. So we are reinvesting in entrepreneurship in this country, we are cutting red tape, we are reducing the overall tax burden and we are trying to create a more and more efficient and effective industrial relations climate. By doing that we will create hundreds of thousands and, in time, millions of new jobs.

I want to remind the House that the Australian taxpayer, since 2001-02, has provided over $1.2 billion of its precious capital in supporting the TCF industry. This bill removes some programs which were put in place to transition to a lower-tariff environment. That job has been done and now we are trying to find savings to deal with the massive debt and deficit legacy that was bequeathed to us to by our political opponents. I commend this bill to the House.

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