Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

If it is not relevant now, it will be relevant next week! We believe in Northern Australia and we want to invest in Northern Australia; that is why the Prime Minister committed $100 million to improve the cattle routes across Northern Australia. Also, significantly, we are investing $5 billion in a Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, a loan facility to help develop pipelines and ports and roads—the major infrastructure that is going to open up the great north. As the member for Durack knows, that—coupled with our small business initiatives in the budget—is going to help 12,700 small businesses in her electorate. The Labor Party knows a lot about small businesses, because they have turned big businesses into small businesses over the years. They are experts at that, and in turning small government into big government. They turn small government into big government and big business into small business. That is the expertise of the modern Labor Party.

We know that there are 18,000 small businesses in Australia that are exporting, and we know that they can do more. So we are facilitating the future with our initiatives on accelerated depreciation, on reducing the company tax rate for small business, on reducing the tax rate for unincorporated small businesses—the people that the Leader of the Opposition forgot; those 1.5 million sole traders and partners out there who were forgotten by the Leader of the Opposition but are always remembered by us. We are not just the best friend of small business, we are the best friend of Northern Australia.

Mr Snowdon interjecting—

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