Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for the opportunity to speak about the appropriation bills in light of what has been received and welcomed as a fair and equitable budget from the Turnbull coalition government. We went to an election openly, and our message to the Australian public was jobs and growth. We pretty well bored most of the Australian public with that message of jobs and growth and jobs and growth. Still I stand at this lectern today in front of the Australian public and suggest that we are delivering both jobs and growth—prosperity for our nation as a result of our prudent, responsible fiscal management. The budget is our major platform for that. Regarding jobs and growth, 2017 was the strongest year of jobs growth on record, according to the Bureau of Statistics, with no less than 415,000 jobs created, three-quarters of which were full time. Sometimes those brave trolls on social media say, 'Where are these jobs?' If you don't believe in the integrity of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, I ask you to go to the Australian Bureau of Statistics website. It will give you a breakdown of the service divisions of where those jobs are being created. If you don't trust them, go to the Reserve Bank. They will also give you a sense of where the economy is growing. More than a million jobs have been created since the Liberal-National government was elected in 2013. That is such an amazing feat.

To put those jobs into some type of contrast, and to understand whether or not 415,000 is a reasonable increase, we must ask what Labor produced in the way of jobs over a similar period and have a look at the final 12 months from when they were last in office. Was it 300,000 jobs? It was a bit lower. Was it 200,000 jobs? Again, it was lower than that. Did they get over the 100,000-job mark in that 12-month period? No, they didn't. Labor, the so-called 'friend of the worker', produced only 89,000 jobs, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, during the remarkably disastrous 12-month Rudd-Gillard-Shorten-Rudd period of absolute anarchy. That is the contrast.

We will hear the rhetoric of how this side of the House is deserting families and giving $17 billion worth of cuts to the big banks. I want to have a chat with the Australian public about when our corporate tax rates are set to kick in. They are outside our forward estimates period—that is, four years down the track. They talk about the $17 billion worth of tax cuts we are giving to big banks. By that time the additional levy we have imposed upon the big banks will generate no less than $16 billion for the federal coffers. We will pull that benefit back from the banks, and it will offset their tax cuts. The corporate tax rates will advantage those businesses in my electorate with turnover of $50 million. Guess what? Businesses with over $50 million turnover will be the benefit of our company tax rate. They go broke as well. It is a competitive industry out there.

The largest contributor to GDP in my electorate is agriculture. I was on a farm the other day with the Prime Minister and the agriculture minister. When I say farm, it is a large organisation. They employ 900 staff. They add value to their product. When you go into the large retailers, you see their product, grown in the Lockyer Valley, on the shelves: zucchini noodles, carrot noodles—ready to cook, picked and packed—coleslaw mixes, bean mixes and cauliflower rice, which is delightful on the dinner plate. So those companies, if given the opportunity, if given a financial break through the company tax rates, will reinvest back in their communities. They will reinvest back with the likes of John Deere, the local tractor agents and the produce and fertiliser salespeople. That is how our local economies grow.

If the opposition looked closely, they would also see that the banks in the 2015-16 period paid a combined company tax bill of over $10 billion. That was reported by the Australian tax office data.gov.au, if you want to have a look at it. Banks pay company tax at the company tax rate. They don't get a special deal, but we do trim them up with the levy. Why is it that the Labor Party want to drive down jobs growth and wages down by stifling those businesses that want to employ Australians. They are businesses like Hood's Rugby Farms—local businesses.

With Australia's current tax competitiveness ranked as one of the lowest and poorest rates across a range of measures, Labor would want to drive the coffin nails in a little bit further. Let's talk about how competitive we are in that tax space. Data released by the Oxford Centre of Business Taxation suggests that, in the 2017 tax competitive ranking of OECD countries, Australia was ranked as the 27th worst performer out of 33 nations. So we are trailing at 27 out of 33. This is the seventh worst ranking on the basis of headline tax and the effective average tax rate. We are ranked 26 out of 33 on the basis of effective marginal tax rates. It is important to understand that last bit, because those who don't want to acknowledge the work done by the Oxford Centre of Business Taxation suggest that there are other local rates of taxation that offset it and skew that data. But when you look at it through the prism of the effective average tax rate, all of those factors are taken into consideration.

In October 2017, the International Monetary Fund's World Economic Outlook report found that a stimulus budget with a mutual reduction in corporate tax rates in France, Germany and the United States would increase economic activities in those localities, whilst also having negative economic spillovers for countries such as ours. The IMF are flagging to the world that, if Australia does not move into this space of company tax rates, it will be left behind. The world is a competitive place for the international flow of capital. We ignore it at our peril. Chris Richards from Deloitte Access Economics said this about the company tax rate: 'This federal tax hurts the economy more than any other.' It is shrinking our economy. We ignore these commentators at our own peril. When Australia cut its tax rate to 30 per cent in 2001 there were 19 OECD countries with higher tax rates than us. Have a guess how many there are today: two. We are lagging. When France's legislation kicks in in 2020, the only OECD country with a higher company tax rate than Australia will be—guess which country, Mr Deputy Speaker?—Portugal. We're asleep at the wheel on this.

Labor claim that it will fund its spending promises by not proceeding with the company tax reductions under our enterprise tax plan. So, as I suggested earlier in my contribution, the revenues that we are going to get from the company tax rates, the $17 billion, won't be realised in our receipts for another four years. But, if you have a look at what Labor are proposing in their budget reply speech, they are going to start spending that money today. Once again, it is Labor who are recklessly spending money they don't have. If you want to put our prudent economic management up against Labor's, remember when they were last in power. They thought they would put up taxes and call it the 'super mining profits tax'? It was to raise $300 million.

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