Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is always a great pleasure to follow my good friend and colleague. We have spent time together. He took us to a part of the debate that elaborated on the traditional parts of Labor's heritage. They want to claim that they own the superannuation space. They want to claim the area around Medicare. Those claims aside, I say that, as a coalition government, we unequivocally own the space of sound economic management. Labor comes nowhere near the coalition's record on running tighter budgets. Labor comes nowhere near on providing the fiscal certainty that this nation needs.

He also spoke about comments that were made 22 years ago about superannuation. I can go a couple years more. Twenty-five years should be a significant number for this parliament. Every time someone walks into this chamber we should be reminding Australians that it has been 25 years since Labor has delivered this country a surplus. They will blame all types of measures for why they have not been able to achieve it, but the underlying fact when it comes to fiscal and economic management, whether it be around superannuation or Medicare, is that they cannot manage a budget. We do it and do it exceptionally well.

In bringing the budget back to order, tough decisions need to be made. We should always take the opportunity, when around superannuation, to remind Australians that the decisions that we are making are nothing other than a by-product of Labor's failed fiscal and economic management. We now have to clean up the mess.

They spoke about promises in earlier speeches—promises that were broken. I draw you to the promise that was made by the Australian Labor Party when they claimed that they had delivered a surplus to this nation—claimed openly, broadcasting it through advertising campaigns. Whether or not there was malice or just pure, unadulterated incompetence, I struggle to understand the difference.

One of the comments earlier on was a poignant one, where the speaker spoke of those receiving superannuation only doing so because they have a job by the good grace of God. Our position in growing the economy is making sure that small business and the business sector have a strong enough bottom line that they can continue to employ people. For the electorate of the mover of this motion herself: it is a beautiful electorate, busy with small- and medium-sized businesses, predominantly around the food sector—it is a very picturesque part of Brisbane. As I travel through that electorate regularly I often see more and more businesses closing on weekends because they cannot afford the exorbitant penalty rates put in place by this government.

So I sit and wonder: we talk about superannuation—if you do not have a job because your business is not open, how much super are you earning if you are sitting and home unemployed? The answer is 'nothing'. So we have made the decision to freeze the fee-for-superannuation rates from 9½ per cent through to 12 and we will not kick them off until 2020.

Labor's leader, when he was the financial services and superannuation minister in government said that increases in compulsory super come out of people's wages. That was his quote. The reality is that it comes out of small business wages—it is an extra expense on them. I make the point, as does the government, that it is far more prudent for an employee to have a position where they are receiving some form of superannuation, rather than being in the circumstance were growing costs are affecting business and of course they are then not able to have a job.

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