Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the original motion—that the Treasury Laws Amendment (Enterprise Tax Plan No. 2) Bill 2017 be now read a second time—and against the amendment that was moved. I think in the last half-hour—a half-hour of my life that I definitely will never get back—you have seen the absolute capitulation of the once great New South Wales Right of the Labor Party. The man that was seen for a long time as the future of that has basically put his hands up in the air and surrendered, rolling over to those in the populist Left of his party in search of votes and, at the same time, walking away from everything that he actually believes and espousing absolute rubbish about the fiscal priorities of this country.

Why do I say that? Because you don't have to look back too far. He said back in 2014—the shadow Treasurer's words, not mine:

… Keating knew that the corporate tax rate needed to be cut to make Australia competitive, that capital and investment would flow to tax-competitive nations and that this was an important job-creation move. Today capital is even more mobile than it was then and it is important that our corporate tax rate is competitive.

You know what? He was right. The significance of what he had to say then and what he's just espoused in this chamber shows you that some politicians are prepared to turn their back on what they believe for their own advancement over that of the general public. This is something we see far too much in modern politics. But it didn't stop there. Again, these are the Shadow Treasurer's words:

… it's a Labor thing to have the ambition of reducing company tax, because it promotes investment, creates jobs and drives growth.

He was right then; he's wrong now. He kept going. He kept giving us cannon fodder:

… the United Kingdom, facing a much tougher fiscal situation than Australia's, cut its company tax rate to 23 per cent in April 2013, to be reduced further to 21 per cent in April 2014.

What you see being espoused on a daily basis both in this chamber and in public by those opposite is their latest iteration of a war on business and a war on investment. The two go hand in hand. They do not have one policy that will create one job. They are about politics, not policy. You go through what the shadow Treasurer has to say on negative gearing, a historic reform if you believe the Shadow Treasurer.

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