David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today's discussion is about jobs, so let's talk about jobs. There is nothing more important to jobs in Australia than trade with our Asian partners and particularly with China. What this government has done through the free trade agreement is create an historic opportunity for the creation of tens of thousands of jobs.

Let's look at what those opposite say. Let's shift our attention to the normally very civil environment of the Federation Chamber, where just a couple of nights ago the member for Bendigo gave an extraordinary, divisive, completely unfounded and damaging speech about the free trade agreement. There was so much in that speech that I would hesitate to repeat, but one of the things she said was that:

It is also alarming for consumers to think that you could call an electrician to come to your house and not know whether they have Australian qualifications and safety standards or those of another country.

That is a very, very serious claim. That is basically trying to scare people and say that the electricity environment will not be safe because of the China free trade agreement. But we know from the Australia-China Relations Institute, headed up by Bob Carr, that, under the China FTA, the skill level of 457 visa applicants from China will be assessed in exactly the same way as those from 150 other countries around the world.

We have an agreement here that is going to create 178,000 jobs. We have signed a trade agreement with our biggest trading partner. It is twice as big or more than our second biggest partner. It accounts for more than one-quarter of our entire trade. We have signed an extraordinary, blockbuster agreement with China that is going to create an extraordinary number of jobs right around the country, nowhere more than in my electorate of Banks where this agreement has been greeted with much enthusiasm.

We have a member over on the other side scaremongering and making appalling statements about this free trade agreement. If the Leader of the Opposition has any courage or capacity to pull his members into line, he should publicly rebuke his member for those appalling statements.

We are talking about jobs. The story on jobs is a very good one. We have the strongest rate of job creation in the G7. The G7 includes the biggest, most powerful economies in the world and Australia's job creation rate is the strongest. We got rid of the carbon tax, which has significantly improved the lives of ordinary Australian families and saved them $550 per year. We are also going to crack down on this absurd practice of fly-in fly-out litigation where environmental groups with no relation to a particular project can fly in and slap down a legal order and delay and frustrate projects that can create tens of thousands of jobs.

The Minister for the Environment has approved projects worth $1 trillion since taking office two years ago. He has approved $1 trillion worth of projects because he knows that the last thing we need is obstructionist, fly-in fly-out litigation. We need to get projects happening, construction on the ground, workers on the ground and cranes in the air. Last year we had record new-company creation—the highest since records were created. We had a 10 per cent increase in a year from 2013.

There is an alternative proposition on the other side. We as a society want to encourage people to save for superannuation. Those opposite want to smash hundreds of thousands of Australians with a new tax on superannuation. We want to encourage people to build assets. About 70 per cent of household assets are in housing—either owner occupied or investment. They want to hit people who invest in housing with a new tax through changes to negative gearing. We want to protect the environment through smart strategies that actually work, like Direct Action. They want to hit them with a new, souped up electricity tax scheme.

Tax reform is not about tax increases. Tax increases are tax increases are tax increases are tax increases. They are not tax reform; they are very, very different things. This government is committed to real tax reform to drive productivity and business formation. They just want to charge more tax.

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