Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to rise this evening to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Accelerated Depreciation for Small Business Entities) Bill 2018 and also address some of the issues raised in the amendment by the opposition: company tax, the opposition's so-called Australian investment guarantee, relief for small businesses, business investment and so on. The subject of this bill is so wide that it would enable anyone to speak on it, and I would hope that members of the opposition do not try and make frivolous and unwarranted interventions when we are speaking on the topic of the bill.

You know why they do it? They don't want to talk about the economics, because they know that when we talk about the economics of this nation and which side of government is best for the nation, when anyone looks at the details, it is the coalition government. That is why those opposite want to try and shut this debate down and not have a wide-ranging discussion. They know, as the health minister pointed out today, that it's the hard work that the coalition government has done on the economy, on enterprise and on small business and getting that investment that has grown the economy and enabled this coalition government to finance many things in the health sector. We've been able to put many drugs on the PBS. The Labor Party was not able to put a single new drug on the PBS, leaving Australians waiting for life-saving drugs, because their blundering and incompetence when it came to economics shrunk the economy and put the budget into deep deficit. It is the coalition government, with our policies to cover investment and wealth creation, that has made the difference for those people.

Firstly, I'll deal quickly with some issues on the amendment. The amendment that the opposition has put forward here talks about the government's company tax cut. What I see time and time again is that members of the opposition simply do not understand how incentives work in the economy. We've seen company tax rates in this nation cut from the high 40 per cents—48 and 49 per cent—down to the current 30 per cent. If you followed the opposition's logic, every single time those corporate tax rates were cut, the government would've ended up with less money because they would've been giving away all this money to big business. But you know what happened, when you look at the numbers?

In this nation's history, every single time we have cut or reduced the corporate rate of tax, two things have happened: we have grown the economic pie of this nation by enabling businesses to come and invest and, more importantly, at the same time, that slice of the company tax receipts pie has grown. Today, in the economy, company tax, at 30 per cent, makes up a greater percentage of GDP than it did when it was at 36 per cent or when it was at a rate in the high 40s. Paul Keating understood that. That is why Paul Keating cut the rate of company tax.

See this speech in context