Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

What a lot of diatribe! We have just heard two speakers, the members for Sydney and McMahon, who have just let loose with a whole lot of criticism and negativity, and not once did we hear from either of those speakers any positive suggestions or counterargument. It was all just a diatribe of negativity and criticism. Aren't we used to that?

With great joy I say that 4½ minutes will not be enough time for me to go through some of the great economic leadership and some of the great economic things that we are doing as a government and have been doing for a while. I will just talk about a few. I will talk about the infrastructure spend; the free trade agreements that I have mentioned and the great, positive economic impact that they are having; and the importance of the tax cuts that we proposed in the last election. We understand on this side of politics—all being involved in business or having run businesses—the importance of that for growth in our economy and, importantly, job growth in our economy. There is the cutting of the red tape that we have done for the last three years and the importance of that, and there is budget repair, which we take very seriously because of the importance that it has.

Let's begin with infrastructure spend. As was previously mentioned by the member for Reid, we have proposed a $50 billion infrastructure spend. Just in my electorate, there is a very important spend that the federal government is committing close to $5 billion on, and that is the upgrade and duplication of the Pacific Highway. Not only is that creating 2,500 direct jobs but, with indirect jobs added to that, it is 6,000 to 7,000 jobs in my community while that upgrade between Woolgoolga and Ballina happens. That is obviously great in the construction phase with the jobs that it brings. It is great postconstruction with the increased efficiency that is brings with both tourism and moving things around. Most importantly, the reason you spend that money, Mr Deputy Speaker, as you would know, is the decrease in fatalities, which is already happening because of that.

The free trade agreements have been mentioned, and we have done many—obviously, with China, South Korea and Japan. What does that mean? That means in my community that Norco, dairy producers, are now putting fresh milk into China. That offers them a great new market for their product. The meatworks in Casino export 70 per cent of what they produce. Seventy per cent of what they process is exported. These free trade agreements are a bonanza for them. There are other, more niche, markets, like our macadamia industry. Page is the home of the macadamia industry in this country, and the free trade agreements we have done are increasing the farm gate price for our macadamia farmers. I could go on. There are blueberries. The other day I went to the opening of a blueberry packing shed in Tabulam which in its peak season is going to employ close to 800 people. Again, this is all being encouraged by the protocols we are doing, getting access to new markets.

Tax cuts! The other side of politics do not get the importance of tax cuts. Tax cuts are important when you run a business and are employing people. And taxes are competitive. We live in a global economy. If we want to go back to a high-taxing economy, taxing our small businesses and taxing our corporations, we will see them leave the country. They will be able to do that. We will be giving tax cuts to our small businesses because we understand that we live in a competitive world. I would like to tell the opposition about quite a well-known case in Ireland. When they had a company tax rate of 60 per cent, do you know what they did? They lowered it to close to 10 per cent and were collecting more tax after three years at 10 than they were at 60. There was more tax at 10 per cent than there was at 60 per cent because corporations went there, flourished and grew. That is why tax cuts are important. But I do not expect those opposite to ever understand that, because they just do not get it.

Red tape is important. We have taken billions of dollars out of the red tape and regulation that has been done over the last few years.

What has all this meant? It has meant some very good figures that I know the member for Reid mentioned earlier. At the moment our economy is growing at over three per cent. Just last week the Prime Minister was overseas and he was the envy of the leaders of other countries because our economy is growing a lot faster than theirs. Over 180,000 jobs have been created just in the last 12 months, again because of the pro-business and pro-growth policies we have. Consumer confidence is up because the consumer knows that we are about fixing our economy.

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