Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party, Minister for Revenue and Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question and I thank the member for Robertson for her question as well. I know how committed she is to her electorate, to being a champion for her electorate and making sure that she can advocate particularly on behalf of those more than 5,000 small businesses that will be beneficiaries of our company tax cuts as well as the unincorporated businesses. Ninety-seven per cent of small businesses in this country are unincorporated, but they too will get the benefit through tax discounts.

She has asked if there are any alternatives. Those opposite, of course, do not support our threshold change to the definition of small business. It has not been changed in a great number of years. They would keep it to less than $2 million in turnover; we are raising it to $10 million. Why would we do that? Because we do not want to put a handbrake on aspiration. We want people to be able to do well. Those opposite would like to penalise them. We think it is a good thing when people do well, because when they do well they can grow more. When they grow more, they can encourage even more employment. The member for Robertson has seen that in her own electorate; in fact, I had the opportunity to visit a number of small businesses in her electorate not so long ago.

She also talks about the benefit of personal income tax cuts and stopping people from going into a higher tax bracket. Again, that is because we believe it is important not to penalise people for doing well. We believe it is important to give them a hand up and we think it is completely ridiculous to think that, in the next 10 years, the majority of Australians will be in the top two tax brackets, unless we do something about it. So it is our down payment on how we can reduce the personal income tax rates for those people.

The member opposite wants to talk about embarrassing moments, speaking about personal income tax rates. When Chris Bowen was the shadow Treasurer, he was asked about personal income tax rates—something that affects absolutely every single Australian in this country. He could not name the tax-free threshold when he was asked by Alan Jones whether or not he could nominate the next tax rate. He took a guess at 15 per cent and, of course, had to be put out of his misery and be told that it was, in fact, 19 per cent. Those opposite have no credibility on these issues and they should not stand in the way of company tax cuts that will benefit small business in this country. He asks me whether or not we are going to proceed with these changes. I would say instead to him: why is it that the Labor Party is so committed to blocking—

Dr Chalmers interjecting—

It is only dead, if you block it.

Dr Chalmers interjecting—

It is only dead if you block it, and you need to be able to look the Australian people in the face and say to them why it is that you stand in the way of small business, why you stand in the way of prosperity for the Australian people and why it is that you will block their aspiration, because it is Labor that is doing that. This side of the House believes it is very important to encourage small business. Those opposite want to put a handbrake on small business and they think the answer to every question is simply to further and further increase taxes. We say it is important—

Dr Chalmers interjecting—

Ratings agencies? I am very happy to speak about ratings agencies. Those opposite would be very, very well aware that we need to get our spending under control in order to satisfy the ratings agencies, and the biggest blocker to getting spending under control, again, is those opposite. While we did have some assistance with the Budget Savings (Omnibus) Bill, frankly, that was not enough. Because of the debt trajectory that we were left with and because of the baked-in spending from those opposite, it was critically important that we address and arrest the spending, and those opposite have been complete blockers.

See this speech in context