Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The honourable member, the Leader of the Opposition, in this question about economic leadership chooses to overlook a few objective facts. We are seeing the Australian economy growing in the December quarter at three per cent real growth. We are seeing high levels of business and consumer confidence. We are seeing high levels of job creation. The economy is successfully transitioning from one that was fuelled by a very large spike in mining constructing investment—close to eight per cent of GDP at its height—to one that is vastly more diverse and that is reacting, of course, and responding to the big opportunities that we have seen in East Asia, enabled by the free trade agreements. So our transition has been very successful. And we need to continue ensuring that it is. The government is making decisions that will enable that to continue. So we are promoting innovation, we are promoting investment, we are providing real incentives to investment in the start-up companies, as I mentioned earlier, that will enable that stronger economic growth.

The Labor Party, on the other hand, are increasing capital gains tax by 50 per cent. It is absolutely calculated to discourage investment at a time when so many people want to move into small business and move out of employment to leverage their human capital into investment and assets. The Labor Party are restricting that. They are proposing that the only asset that anyone can negative gear against their own personal income is new residential housing. Under the spurious guise of talking about affordable housing, they are saying you cannot negative gear a portfolio of listed shares, you cannot negative gear shares in a private company that you have set up to start a business, you cannot negative gear commercial property. What on earth has that got to do with affordable housing? I will tell you what it does have a lot to do with: it is blocking the path to entrepreneurship and the path to enterprise.

When you look at real reform, my government is taking the tough decisions. We are taking on reform of the Senate, the most fundamental and most important institution in the country. We are taking on Senate reform. Labor has walked away from that. We are taking on media law reform, which has been kicked into the long grass for at least a decade. That is another reform that has come out of the too-hard basket. Today we are announcing reforms to section 46—standing up for competition and standing up for consumers. These are all examples of a government that is not afraid to take on issues that have been put into the too-hard basket for years, if not decades. We are governing. We are getting on with real economic leadership.

Ms Macklin interjecting—

Mr Brendan O'Connor interjecting—

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