Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Special Minister of State (House)) Share this | Hansard source

It sounds like the member for Forrest has some terrific local businesses in her part of the world, and I enjoyed hearing some of their stories in her contribution just now. I'm also pleased that the member for Parramatta is here in the chamber. The member for Parramatta is an extraordinarily dedicated champion of small businesses not just in Parramatta but right around Australia. She has a small business background and is a very valuable and respected contributor to small business policy on our side of politics.

Chambers of commerce—they've got different names all around Australia—are so important. They do a really good job of representing the interests of small to medium sized businesses in our community. I want to begin my contribution by acknowledging the work of the Logan Chamber of Commerce. I've been a member of the Logan Chamber of Commerce for some years now. It is a great group, and a very well motivated contributor to our local community. I want to acknowledge in the House of Representatives just how much I appreciate the engagement that we have with the Logan Chamber of Commerce. Just two weeks ago I gave a breakfast briefing to the Logan Chamber of Commerce at Diggers RSL. I was joined by my friend and colleague Cameron Dick, a terrific minister in the state government. He is now the Minister for State Development and Infrastructure. What I told the Logan Chamber of Commerce then—and it is the crux of what I want to tell the parliament today—was that when you've got pretty serious budget constraints you want to make sure the tax relief you give to businesses is targeted to where it can do the most good. We want to make sure that we get the maximum bang for our buck when it comes to tax relief for Australian businesses. And that's why we wholeheartedly support the bill before the House, which is about the instant asset write-off. We wholeheartedly support it for a range of reasons. An important reason why we support it is that we were the authors of it. I worked on this policy in another role in this building. I worked for the member for Lilley, who was the first Treasurer to implement this instant asset write-off. Unfortunately, it was chopped by the member for Warringah and the member for North Sydney in their first budget and, frankly, I'm pleased to see it back and pleased to see it extended. We support that because it is an important way to deliver targeted tax relief which will make a real difference to businesses in our local areas.

We want to target tax relief to where it can do the most good, where we can get the maximum bang for buck. For the same reason, we have proposed an Australian investment guarantee, which is all about accelerated depreciation for businesses of all sizes to ensure that the money we're investing in that tax cut or the money foregone from that tax cut in the budget is guaranteeing investment onshore in Australia. That means investment in Australian jobs.

One of the issues that we have with the government's alternative—the $80 billion tax cut—is that, as Goldman Sachs, the Prime Minister's former employer, and others have pointed out, a large chunk of that $80 billion in tax cuts will actually spray around overseas in the form of executive bonuses, share buybacks and puffed up dividends. So we don't think that an $80 billion outlay on a tax cut like that will actually do the good we need it to do onshore. That's why we've proposed an alternative. That's how we roll on this side of the House. If we don't like something the government has put up, whether it be to do with personal income taxes, company taxes or other policy areas, we propose an alternative. Our alternative is the Australian investment guarantee. I think, together—

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