Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

It has been a bravura performance from the Minister for Small Business. He has mentioned our friend the member for Fenner so many times that I was wondering whether they were having a fatal attraction moment. He talked so often about him that you get this Pavlovian response: every time the member for Fenner opens his mouth, the minister has to jump to his feet.

The other bizarre thing was the reference back and forth about National Party members and voters in the member for Kingsford Smith's seat. This made me think: what do you call a National Party member in Maroubra? An anomaly. I know the member for Whitlam would refer to them as tourists, but it is an anomaly. We have gone through everything. The reality is that this plan is thrashing around for purpose. This plan is thrashing around for reason. This plan is thrashing around for any attempt, anything whatsoever, to save the Prime Minister, to be able to demonstrate that something, anything, is being done. It is not being done with any economic thought in mind and it is not being done to actually improve the economy in any meaningful way. For example, those on the other side say: 'We need to do this to help companies. We need to do this to boost their profitability. We need to do this so that they can operate more efficiently.'

Mr Laundy interjecting—

Let me explain it to you this way, Member for Reid: look at where dividends have gone from 2014 to 2017. Dividends have gone from $40 billion to $70 billion—that is, $30 billion in three years. We need to put in a tax plan to be able to help those companies that are paying out to investors an extra $30 billion. The money is there. Are they spending it on better wage outcomes? No. What have we got? We have got record low wages growth. What else have we got? Record high underemployment. These companies are not handing it out in terms of employees. In fact, it will be interesting to see, in their own budget, what impact wages growth has on the budget. We will be interested to see that. Are these businesses that have billions extra in dividends investing? No. What is capex doing under your watch? What is the level of business investment in this country under your watch? Tanking. Absolutely floored. It is not that the money is being used for workers and it is not that the money is being used to improve the economy; it is going straight to investors. So what do these guys do? For those opposite, their great plan is to take a big chunk of money that would go into investing in, for example, the skills of future Australians—by putting it into education, TAFE, schools and universities—but, no, they are not going to invest in that. What they are going to do is take a big slice of federal funds and hand it to a bunch of investors who have already got $30 billion extra in dividend growth and then they are going to fund an even greater amount of money by taking if off schoolkids and giving it to investors. This tells you exactly what the values of those opposite are. They do not see an investment in education as a proper thing to do. No, that is bad debt. We do not invest in schoolchildren. What we will do is hand over all this money. As you have heard, as the member for Shortland rightly pointed out, where does the bulk of the money go? Eight billion dollars of it goes offshore. It is not invested here. It goes offshore. It goes away elsewhere.

This is what I am saying when I indicate to people that this is not a plan mired in improving the economic viability or the strength of the nation. No. This is not a plan for a longer term view about what we should be doing as a country. No. This is just an idea. This is thrashing around for something, anything, to save those opposite and to be seen to be doing something. But here is the thing: longer term, we lose out. We do not have that money for education, we do not have that money for infrastructure and we do not have that money to actually strengthen the economy. It will just go straight out the door. It will be forgotten like yesterday's headline. As a result, if we were to get this plan through, what would happen? They would go on to the next big thing and stuff that up anyway. The very thing that is being promoted as some way or some means of saving the Prime Minister will be forgotten in a heartbeat tomorrow. What we need is a longer term view about what is good for the country. We do not need the short termism that is being promoted by those opposite.

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