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

It is indeed a pleasure to be able to stand and deliver yet another appropriation speech. This is potentially our best budget that we have ever delivered from a government's perspective. It is always an honour to follow the member for Melbourne, who gave a stirring speech, but omitted to mention—it was probably just a slight oversight in his delivery—the jobs package and a few of the instant write-off benefits that small businesses in my area will benefit from.

For the benefit of the previous member, I would like to indulge in sharing with the chamber some of the benefits that this budget delivers for all Australians. But before I do, the previous speaker spoke about this budget. He mentioned that this budget leaves people angry. I have had the opportunity in the last week to spend an enormous amount of time with people in the small business sector in my electorate. They are far from angry. They are a group of people who have not been heard in the last 10 years. We respect the small business sector. Most of us on this side of the House come from some form of small business whether we were engaged in one or owned a small business or employed people in small business. We inherently understand that small business is the engine room of this economy and that small business is the vehicle for us to drive future growth, and future growth means more jobs.

The previous speaker spoke about jobs and said that there were no jobs. If you go back through the Hansard, the jobs that the Greens propose into the future are full. There are 12 million green jobs that they allude to, 12 million green jobs that will be there in the future. I can assure you that the green jobs are not there at the moment in the magnitude that the previous speaker would like to have the room believe.

He also spoke about science and technology and said that there had been cuts to future research, yet we put forward a future fund of $20 billion. It was opposed. Do not come to this place and complain about research being cut and then, when we put up funds specifically designed around research, oppose them, because it attacks your credibility.

He spoke about jobs and asked what we are doing for our youth. What we are doing for our youth is something that will transform, hopefully, our unemployment data for our youth. The work for the dole program was an initiative that was first introduced by the Howard government. We have taken it one step further with our Work for the Dole program, encouraging businesses now to participate in reaching out to those long-term unemployed to bring them into the business, to give them real, live work experience in a working business, not some training camp, not out working for a council picking up rubbish, just to tick a box to say that they are now a holder of some class I certificate, but actually working in a real, live, operational business. It is those real-life experiences which will allow the small business sector to try before they buy with someone who has been long-term unemployed, and that creates the real linkages.

That creates the opportunity for someone looking for a job to understand the importance of engaging with the public, getting out of bed early and being part of a team environment, knowing at the end of the day that they have put a decent day in, and going home feeling a valued part of their community. I know that both sides of the House would agree that they are the values for us to be a rich and prosperous nation—that those are the values we need to instil in our unemployed people so that they become valued members of our community. The best thing we can do for someone who is struggling to shift themselves from the current socioeconomic group of an unemployed sector into the workplace is to give them hope, and the way we do that is to try to stimulate our small business sector.

In trying to stimulate our small business sector, we have to stimulate the economy. The $20,000 instant write-off was one of the ways that we proposed in this budget to do exactly that. The budget measure speaks to the fact that, despite the economic headwinds, we are fixing Labor's mess. We will help by making Australia strong and giving Australians more choice for their future, stabilising the nation's finances and reducing debt. This is a key to building a stronger economy and a better future for all Australians.

Those on the other side of the House would think that it is some type of fiscal nirvana where you can continue to spend, with spending habits like we saw with the pink batts installation. We saw spending measures in the school halls. All of that was done on borrowed money.

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