Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. Member for Perth, I do think you should make a personal explanation on this and explain to the Australian people why we have had to suffer for six years under such an onerous regime, really setting us back. All of your government planning, all of your wont for borrowing money or for taxing, appropriating people's money so you can pick the winners and losers shows a really naive lack of understanding about how the real economy functions. It is not the role of government to pick the winners and losers. For every success story that the member for Perth has raised, there are millions of success stories in the private economy, in the private sector space. For every one that the former government had a hit on, there were hundreds of thousands of government misses. And of course I should mention their strategic interventions in all those industries I have mentioned, including insulation, live export, green cars, which were graphic failures—a government picking absolute losers, costing the taxpayer borrowed and appropriated money in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and including, tragically, some lives in some cases. The role of government is not to pick the winners and losers, it is not to strategically intervene into these areas; it is to allow people to have options given to them up-front, with the appropriate tax concessions.

The government has some amendments here that are appropriate tax concessions, which are reasonable and which are small incentives to incentivise people to have their own employee share options and schemes. These schemes are much more competitive in our competitor nations—the UK, the US. These are very attractive schemes. They provide great benefit for start-ups, employees and employers. They enhance the employee-employer relationship because the employee has a direct involvement in the wealth and success of the business, something that we in this place should all welcome. They seek to break down the negative industrial barriers that the retrograde union movement in Australia so often sets up, which is the employee versus the employer all the time. It is actually a great partnership. We should do anything we can do to provide those incentives for employees to have a great investment in their own business, in the success of their business. It is good for employees, good for employers, good for business and good for the country more generally. So it is vital that we pursue these amendments and make these arrangements more competitive.

I want to commend the approach of the Minister for Small Business. His approach to deregulation for small business is vital. It is the No. 1 thing you will hear from industry and from business on all scales. His moves in this space and, in particular, his getting rid of these ridiculous arrangements the Labor Party put in place that were never going to work in employee share schemes will of course mean that we are much more competitive internationally, attracting more capital and the ability of valuable employees from around the world, who will be able to exercise these options. We just simply cannot compete on the international labour market, the global labour market, with arrangements such as this where options are not attractive to those high-capacity individuals that we do want to see coming here and helping Australians start up in business. This is of course very sensible in that space.

We are increasing the percentage to 10 per cent, in taking into account the reality of the modern economy. I note even one of the members opposite noted the 10 per cent stake in Apple. So 10 per cent is a reasonable threshold.

Finally, I also note, just as a footnote, because it is not very significant, the ridiculous and pious amendment of the member for Fraser, attempting to hide the Labor Party's singular embarrassment about these dreadful measures that have set Australia back by six to seven years, by condemning the government for science and innovation cuts. I have to say to the member for Fraser: no amount of smokescreen can hide the fact that the Labor Party brought in these unnecessary and ridiculous measures that were always going to completely shut down the capacity for employee share schemes to be viable. We are six years behind. I would say to the member for Perth, who is very fond of this phrase, that there is something that the Australian Labor Party can do to help small business, help the economy and that is to absolutely get out of the way.

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