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

I thank the honourable member for his question. Last year there were 403,000 new jobs, more than 1,100 jobs a day, and three-quarters of them full time. A year ago the Leader of the Opposition said 2017 was going to be about 'jobs, jobs, jobs'. Well, you know what? It was! And the jobs were created by the very policies that he opposes. The reality is that our economic leadership is delivering the dividends that Australians deserve in stronger growth and more jobs. We've seen this again today in the latest NAB business survey—confidence is up another two points, now up 12, which is well above the long-run average. Confidence, as all honourable members know, is absolutely critical. It drives investment, and investment leads to more jobs.

The big difference between our side and the Labor side is that we have one policy after another which focus on delivering stronger economic growth, including reducing tax for small and medium family owned businesses, moving on to all businesses. We know—as the Labor Party used to say all the time and as they said at some length after the 2010 budget—if you reduce business tax, you get more investment. If you have more investment, you get more jobs. That seemed to be well understood. We know that we operate in a competitive global environment. With the US going down to 21 per cent company tax and with other countries reducing their business tax, we now find Australia is one of the very highest business-taxing countries in the OECD.

Why do we think that we can effectively compete when we ask people to pay much higher taxes here on business than they do in other comparable locations for investment? We've got those policies, we've got our investment allowance and we've got our infrastructure commitments. Labor does not have one policy which will encourage one company to invest one dollar or hire one employee. What they do offer, however, is higher taxes on businesses, on investments, on individuals and on family businesses. They will have a 50 per cent Renewable Energy Target, which they've never bothered to cost and which we know will deliver higher electricity prices, putting more and more pressure on families and businesses. The reality is this: Labor does not have one policy which will create one dollar of investment, one new employee or one job. That is where the gulf between us lies right now. We are for investment. We're for jobs. We're for growth. We're for opportunities. Labor opposes them all.

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