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

I thank the honourable member for his question. Nearly 1,000 jobs have been created every day over the last year—a thousand new jobs a day—as a direct result of our pro-growth, pro-investment, pro-business policies. We support the policies that make Australian businesses more competitive. Why is that? Because the overwhelming majority of Australians—86 per cent, in fact—are employed by private business. Ten and a half million Australians are employed in the private sector, so, plainly, it is in our interest, our national interest, to ensure that Australian businesses are strong and competitive.

The tax cuts that we negotiated through the Senate for small and medium businesses with turnovers of up to $50 million a year are enabling those companies to invest more and employ more, and, collectively, these businesses—overwhelmingly Australian family owned businesses—employ half the Australian private sector workforce. So what we're doing is we're backing business, backing investment and getting more employment. That is what we're delivering.

And we're backing our manufacturers and big energy users by cutting the cost of power and improving reliability through the National Energy Guarantee. We're opening up big new markets for our exporters, for agriculture and services, with new and enhanced export deals. That is the key to growth.

Who could be opposed to this? Seriously, who could be opposed to this? I don't have to look far. It's the Leader of the Opposition. You would think that this would be bipartisan, and yet in reports today in the press, in a Miranda Devine article, we hear what we've long suspected—

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