Brett Whiteley (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Let us try to bring some calmness to this debate.We have had the duelling actors out and about for the last 15 minutes. I would not mind so much if they were actually good at it, but they are not even good at that.

The reality here is: these people opposite, who claim to be the representatives of the future of Australia, have no understanding of the importance of business in this country. When we talk about jobs, when we talk about our young people needing a future and needing employment opportunities—not just young people but, generally, people who are experiencing unemployment—we have to understand that businesses, whether they be small, big or huge, are the hope of the side. Business is the hope of the side, if we are talking about unemployment. But we know that those opposite with a socialism bent believe that the hope of the side is to simply have the government employ everyone. They want the government to employ. They are the people who think that that is the way to fix unemployment.

We on this side of the House support business. You can argue the toss about small, medium, large or huge, but the fact of the matter is: for our young people to have the opportunity into the future for a job, we need to make sure there is certainty and confidence in the business sector. We need to make sure that the business sector has a competitive taxation regime and that it has people working for it who are aspirational and are wanting to build a future for their families. What is wrong with that? What do those opposite have against business? Why is it that, every time this government or the community calls for certainty and confidence, incentives and all that go with building that into business, the Labor Party falls short of supporting it?

I do not know what they have against business, but they need to understand that business in this nation is the hope of the side. If we do not provide that confidence to business, if we do not provide them with the incentive to keep their businesses in Australia—because we are lagging behind when you talk about the competitiveness of the company tax rate in comparable countries and we are lagging behind when you talk about personal income tax rates. I want to be part of a government that understands that our businesses need to be competitive, because those businesses, at the end of the day, will provide the jobs for my kids and my grandkids. Those jobs do not appear out of nowhere. They appear through the hard work, the determination, the investment and the backing in of themselves of businesses all over Australia.

In those businesses, we have people who we call 'tradies'. They are the businesses where maybe a husband and wife team up to run their own little plumbing business or building business. One of the partners is doing the trade; the other is supporting them in the management of the business. They are often just partnerships. They are simply partnerships. They are aspirational Australians. They want to build a future for themselves, their children and their grandchildren. They do not want to be necessarily depending on an age pension when they get to that age. They want to be self-sufficient. And what do we have today? We have a Labor Party that says that anyone who is earning $80,000, or even $79,000 today and creeping over $80,000 tomorrow, should not have a very small sense of taxation relief. We are only talking here about $300-odd as a maximum—the difference between $80,000 and $87,000. Can we put to rest, once and for all, this nonsense about someone earning huge amounts of money getting a $17,000 tax cut? That is absolutely ridiculous. The Prime Minister put that to bed, but you guys over there will continue to perpetuate this deceit to the Australian people. But I am sure that they are up to it.

Having Labor talk about their support for budget repair, as I heard the earlier speaker say, is like Hannibal Lecter talking about his support for vegetarians. Really, these are the very people—and most of them are still here—who were part of a government that trashed the national economy and that left us in high levels of debt that this country has never ever seen. And they stand here today and suggest that they have the answers to repair the budget! Anybody with any common sense who is listening to this or reading this today would know that you cannot trust the person who lit the fire to come back and put it out.

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