Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

It is very hard to take the member for McMahon, and Labor, seriously when the member for McMahon said on ABC Radio on 13 May 2010:

… the government has returned the budget to surplus three years ahead of schedule and ahead of any other major advanced economy …

I do not know what he was drinking that night but it was not ouzo, I can tell you. He was a professor of ouzo economics. We have produced a budget which will set up Australia for the future—a budget that capitalises on the green shoots in the Australian economy. It is a budget which sees us seize the opportunities afforded by the free trade agreements we have signed in the region with Japan, South Korea and China; the opportunities afforded by the more than $2 billion of red-tape we have cut; and the opportunities afforded by the abolition of the carbon tax and the mining tax.

The key themes running through this budget are three. The first is focused on small business and jobs. When it comes to jobs, we want to target those young people who are neither in education nor in employment. We want to work with groups like the Brotherhood of St Laurence to help them get a job and start working for an income. We also want to give them work experience. One of the programs we have will subsidise employers to take on young people for up to 25 hours a week for four weeks, while those young people retain their income support. Another job program in this budget is about accelerating payments to employers through a $1.2 billion wage subsidy pool—for example, there is the Restart program, which will see people aged over the age of 50 get into the workforce after they have been on income support. We will provide up to $10,000 to an employer who does that. What about the package for small business? Small business will now get its greatest tax cut in over 50 years. It will see the company tax rate for incorporated companies with revenue under $2 million cut to 28½ per cent. And unincorporated companies with revenue under $2 million will get a tax discount of up to 5 per cent, up to $1,000 a year. Both incorporated and unincorporated companies will also get the benefit of a massively accelerated depreciation of up to $20,000 for two years. This is extremely significant and allows small businesses to innovate and invest. Did you know that eight out of every 10 jobs in agriculture in this country are in small business, and that nine out of every 10 businesses that are investing in innovation and high technology are small businesses? We on this side of the House understand that small business is the engine room of the Australian economy. Those on the other side of the House had a rotisserie of ministers in the small business portfolio. They had five in just six years, rotating and rotating on the hot burner, as 517,000 jobs were lost in small business under Labor's watch. Shame on them!

There is also red-tape abolition—for example, getting rid of the fringe benefits tax on portable electronic devices and no longer requiring companies to have an ABN, a tax file number and an Australian company number. They now only need one number. There are also our initiatives around crowdsourced funding.

The second big package of initiatives in this budget relates to families and, in particular, to child care. There is $3.5 billion worth of new funding—taking the Productivity Commission as our guide, with a sliding scale of 85 per cent down to 50 per cent, with a real focus on low- and middle-income earners. We have tightened the activity test to ensure that the government is now only providing child care to those families who are actually in work, because we understand that if we can boost workforce participation we can strengthen the Australian economy. By our estimates, and the department's estimates, some 240,000 families will now either enter the workforce or will stay in the workforce longer as a result of our measures. There is also a $240 million-plus initiative for nannies, which will provide 10,000 children with 4,000 nannies—focusing, again, on some of the less advantaged areas in our country as well as regional areas. There is our $840 million commitment to 15 hours a week of universal access for preschool children. That is a signature set of policies around child care and families.

The third leg of the budget we are so proud of relates to multinational tax and to ensuring that multinationals pay their fair share of tax. The way we have done that is to strengthen part IVA of the anti-avoidance provisions to ensure that around 30 companies with artificial and contrived tax arrangements that the ATO has been looking at are paying their fair share; to ensure that the taxpayers in Australia—the mums and dads, the nurses and the doctors—are not short-changed by these multinationals not paying their fair share. We have doubled the penalties for breaches, and have also ensured that the GST is applied consistently to the importation of intangibles by companies like Netflix, to ensure that domestic providers of those services are now on a level playing field. I am very proud of those three sets of big initiatives around jobs and small business, families and child care, and the strengthening of our tax system and its integrity.

On top of that, there will be a record investment of $1.2 billion in national security, on top of the $1 billion we have already announced for ASIO, the Australian Federal Police and the Defence Force. We know ASIO has 400 high-priority terrorism-related investigations right now. We know that our intelligence agencies and our law enforcement agencies are very focused on the fact that more than 20 Australians have gone to Iraq and Syria where they are being killed—including a number of suicide bombers.

What about health? We on this side of the House, rather than the opposition, have also put up an additional $1.3 billion worth of drugs onto the PBS, including important drugs for melanoma and for cancer sufferers, because we know we have a moral obligation to assist those who are less fortunate than ourselves. What about our changes to the pension? Again, we are ensuring a more fair and sustainable pension, because the pension—

Ms Macklin interjecting—

You are in denial, the member for Jagajaga, who sits opposite. That is complete denial about the sustainability of the pension. It is the single largest budgetary item we have, at $42 billion, and it is growing at six per cent per year. It is currently 10 per cent of the Australian budget and, with the number of people over the age of 65 doubling in the next 40 years, we know we have to make the budget more sustainable. Not only will our changes to the taper rates and the asset-free areas ensure that people who may have been on a part pension but are low on assets are now going on the full pension; we have also saved $2.4 billion over the forward estimates through these measures. I am very proud of that.

As the Treasurer and the Prime Minister said today in the parliament, our budget also contains support for Northern Australia, support for farmers, $5 billion worth of concessional loans, the ability for farmers to instantly write off fencing costs, more money for mental health counsellors in drought-affected areas and $330-odd million worth of support for the drought-affected parts of our country. I am very proud of all that.

In my last minute and a half, I want to focus on one very important part of this budget and that is continuing the path of budget repair, continuing to pay back the debt and deficit that the Leader of the Opposition was completely ignorant about today. Thirteen times on Neil Mitchell's program today, he avoided a simple question and did not take responsibility for Labor's debt. When they came into government in 2007 there was zero government debt, there was $50 billion in the bank and $20 billion worth of budget surpluses. Labor created this mess and now they are refusing to support us as we fix it up. We were borrowing $130 million a day just to pay their bills; now we have brought it down to $96 million a day. This is despite writing own $90 billion worth of revenue as a result of falling commodity prices. We have brought spending growth down from 3.6 per cent per annum—that those on the other side of the House created—to just 1.5 per cent per annum over the forward estimates. That is even taking into account our major obligations and our rightful obligations to fund the NDIS going further.

From a budget deficit of $48 billion that we inherited, it will be $35 billion next year. In three years time it will be $7 billion and we will get to surplus over time. We have been left to fix up Labor's mess. We are very proud of this budget. It sets up Australia for a very bright future.

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