Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Gilmore is right when she says, 'Shame!' I agree with her. One minute they are saying that needs based school funding is important and that they give a Gonski and everything, and then when Mr Gonski himself comes out with the Prime Minister and Minister Birmingham in relation to $18 billion worth of increases for schools, what do Labor do? They vote against it, because they said that it is not enough.

They cannot fund a single thing. Everyone knows that the Labor Party cannot balance the budget. The young people up in the gallery know that. That is the reason why this young generation is going to be stuck with higher taxes for generations to come, because that mob over there racked up deficits after Kevin Rudd got in and said that he was an economic conservative. My 15-year-old son could spend more than what he earns, if he were able to. It does not take a genius to come into this place and say: 'I'm going to spend more than what I have: There's a GFC—quick, that's a good excuse to rack it up. Let's rack it up. Let's give away school halls, let's give away pink batts and let's give away all the other stuff. And, while we're at it, let's whack a carbon tax on to keep the votes for the Greens on side. That's going to push up energy bills for pensioners.'

This is the modern-day Labor Party. One minute we get the member for Lilley, as Treasurer, saying that he was going to fight tooth and nail for company tax reductions. That is what he said, and the Leader of the Opposition said the same thing, 'Were going to fight for this; it's going to be great for jobs and great for small business.' Now, it is a $65 billion tax cut. So I ask the young people in the gallery and those people reading this speech at home that when we talk about company tax reductions, do you think that the government just likes to give away tax? Do you think that somehow we like to come in here and say, 'Here you go, let's hand over a bit of extra tax.' I do not think so. There is a reason for it. It supports our plan for jobs and growth, a plan that those people over there do not have. They have no plan for jobs and growth.

We have a plan that will help young people to secure a job well into the future. But I will not go off on that. I am just highlighting to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and to the people in my constituency, the hypocrisy of Labor and their flip-flopping on all sorts of issues. This includes more affordable child care. We all know that parents who are wanting to get back to work are getting hit with big excesses in child care after nine months. Those over the voted against it.

And there is balancing the budget. Please, as I said before, we know that every time they run a deficit. Last time, not only did they rack up billions of dollars' worth of debt—what if our senators had not been in the Senate to make savings?—but they went into the 2016 election promising an extra $16 billion in debt, and the member for McMahon said that somehow they were going to magically balance the budget at the same time. They were going to rack up $16 billion in debt that every single person in the public gallery would have to pay for through higher taxes because of accumulating debt each year. Every single person would pay for that and every business would get hit with it. And then, when you went to buy something at a business, whether it was a bed from Harvey Norman, a counter meal at the local pub or a holiday, you would get hit with increased cost. You would get hit with increased cost, because the Labor Party thinks that businesses are cash cows. The reason we support lowering company tax is that we want to be competitive worldwide, and we know that, as the member for Lilley said—and he fought tooth and nail for it when he was Treasurer—it helps jobs.

I want to thank the crossbenchers for voting to support small business and medium businesses up to $50 million and giving them a company tax reduction. I will not thank the member opposite who was once the small business minister in 2013. He came up to my electorate in 2013 and spoke at the chamber of commerce and spoke about how good they were for small business! Give me a break, please! He upped the carbon tax.

But let me get on to state Labor. Let me get on to the Palaszczuk government, because probably everyone who is my age or above in Queensland will remember the blackouts we had in 2004. Basically, in Queensland, ever since Joh left, back in '87, we had not had any investment in our electricity system by Labor premiers. Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta, you would remember that, in 2004, we had a lot of blackouts.

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