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

I regret that the honourable member was not listening closely, because, had he been, he would recall that I said that the business enterprise tax cuts already passed have a 10-year cost of $24 billion, which I said was around half of the total package, and I am reminded by the Treasurer that the second part of the package would have a 10-year cost of $26 billion. So, it is around half of the $50 billion package.

But the fundamental point is this. If we want to ensure that our children and our grandchildren have jobs, if we want to ensure that our businesses can compete, if we want to be sure that people will invest in Australian businesses, then we must have a competitive tax rate. Now, nobody has more eloquently spoken of the need for this than the Leader of the Opposition, when he said that a lower company tax rate means more investment, more productivity, more employment. So motivated and inspired by this eloquence was the member for McMahon that he wrote a whole book about it. The fact is that the Labor Party cannot be trusted on this or any other issue. They promise to do one thing and they do the reverse, just like they promised to fight for the schoolkids bonus every day up to the election. Well, they abandoned it just before the election, as we remember, and they abandoned their commitment to tax reform. They abandoned their commitment to investment, to employment, to Australian workers, just as the Leader of the Opposition used to sell his own members down the river when he was running the AWU. (Time expired)

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