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

I hear the comment from the member for Wills, saying that former Prime Minister Paul Keating was a great Prime Minister. Paul Keating understood the importance of reducing the rate of company tax. We have seen not only Australia but almost every OECD nation this century understand the same thing. Almost every OECD nation has reduced their rate of company tax. Why? They understand that that is the way you can grow your economy. We are now faced with a situation where our corporate rate of tax of 30 per cent is no longer internationally competitive. We have seen the US reduce their rate from 35 per cent all the way down to 21 per cent. We are trying to compete against countries like Hong Kong and Singapore, which have corporate tax rates of 15 and 17 per cent. We have seen New Zealand reduce their corporate rate of tax. It was great to see the former New Zealand Prime Minister John Key here in Sydney last weekend. When he reduced the corporate rate of tax, do you know what happened in New Zealand? It was exactly the same thing that has happened here: the economy grew, and they actually ended up with more tax revenue to spend. That is more money to spend on all the things that we need to provide welfare for those Australians who are unfortunate and less well off. The greatest contrast between the Labor Party and the coalition that I can recall was spoken of in the speech from the health minister this afternoon in question time. He said that it's all about creating more wealth so we can afford to put things such as life-saving drugs on the PBS. Everyone on this side of the House should be very proud of what we've done.

If we're going to have a competitive economy in the years ahead, we have to have an internationally competitive rate of corporate tax, yet we have the opposition over there doing every single thing in their power to stop that from happening. How can we have First World wages or the best public hospital system that this nation can afford if we no longer have an internationally competitive corporate rate of tax or internationally competitive energy prices? Those are the two policies that the Labor Party want to inflict upon this nation. They want to see us have the highest electricity prices in the world because their policy is to copy the failed South Australian experiment. They want us to stick to an uncompetitive international rate of corporate tax. Those policies forebode terrible things for our nation should Labor ever sit on this side of the parliament.

This particular bill is just another example of how the coalition is backing small business. It's through the backing of small business by this coalition government that we have seen over one million jobs created since we were elected in 2013. I remember that, back then, we said that we would set a target that, in two terms of government, the entrepreneurs would create another million new jobs in this economy. They laughed. They scoffed. They said it wasn't possible. And you know what? We have delivered that million new jobs and we've delivered it before we said that we would. You would expect the opposition to sit back and simply say: 'Well done. Congratulations. You guys got it right and we got it wrong.' That's what you would expect. You would expect them to say: 'We apologise. Coalition government, you put in the policies that created a million new jobs, something that we never dreamed of doing.'

Now to some of the specifics of this bill. As announced in the 2018-19 budget, this bill extends a $20,000 instant asset write-off for a further 12 months, to 30 June 2019, for businesses with an aggregate turnover of less than $10 million. This is something that we need to explain, because the Labor Party thinks that any business with a turnover of more than $2 billion is a big business. They simply don't understand the difference between turnover and profit. They have no understanding whatsoever. Any business in the country listening tonight should note that if they go out and they want to make a $20,000 investment in some new capital investment for their business they will get an instant asset write-off from this government. There are around 3.3 million unincorporated businesses with an aggregate turnover of less than $10 million dollars that will be eligible for it. Every single one of those 3.3 million businesses will be eligible for that $20,000 instant asset write-off.

Extending this threshold for a further year is the government striking a balance between helping small businesses' cashflow and investment and the revenue impact on the budget bottom line, which we are returning to surplus. We expect that the budget will be returned to surplus. We've finally turned the corner on the damage that was done by the previous Labor government, who drove the budget into deep deficit year after year after year. One year early we'll be getting that budget back into balance. And then we have the long, hard job of paying back that debt. The coalition have done it before. Going back to the previous century, in 1996, we know that the Howard government inherited a $96 billion deficit. They paid back every single cent. It took them at least six years. They not only paid back every single cent; but along the way they also had to pay back $54 billion in interest. Then they put $40 billion in the Future Fund and they had the budget in a $20 billion surplus. That is what the Labor Party inherited, and they squandered it. We are now within striking distance of getting that budget back into balance.

There is a lot more that the government is doing to help small business in addition to this $20 million instant asset write-off. We're also investing $20 million to help small businesses form local and regional business hubs so that entities can work together and access new export markets and global supply chains. We're providing $17.7 million to support entrepreneurs—the drivers of the economy; the wealth creators—including mentoring support and a focus on those aged over 45 years. We should be doing that, because over 45 years of age should almost be the time when many people start their entrepreneurial career, because they have the experience—the life experience, the business experience—that can help them make important entrepreneurial decisions.

We're also protecting small businesses from businesses that deliberately go bust to avoid paying their bills, with tough new measures to counter illegal phoenixing. We are continuing to reduce red tape burdens across the small-business sector. We are launching FTA negotiations with the European Union. That's also another huge difference.

Many of these small businesses that can take advantage of the accelerated depreciation will be working in export markets, because we, on this side of the House, understand how important it is to give Australian businesses access to markets. We have confidence that, if they get access to the markets, then they can compete on that international playing field as well as any other business from any other nation in the world. This is in contrast to what we have seen from the Labor Party. During the free trade negotiations with Japan, we had the Leader of the Opposition bring up midget subs. That was his contribution to the debate, to bring up the midget sub attack on Sydney during World War II. During the China free trade agreement discussions, the opposition quoted xenophobic statements about how, somehow or other, we shouldn't be doing that with China. We've seen the success of those free trade agreements. We've seen them give thousands of businesses opportunities to increase their exports across all sectors of the economy, and that's why we're continuing those negotiations with the European Union.

We've also redefined 'small business' as a business with a turnover of up to $10 million, which now includes 99 per cent of all businesses. We've cut taxes for small and medium enterprises to 25 per cent and increased the unincorporated business discount to 16 per cent. I've already mentioned that we've extended the $20,000 instant asset write-off for another 12 months. And, importantly, we've abolished $5.8 billion worth of red tape—or I should more correctly say red and green tape—whereas the opposition want to tie businesses up, put more regulations on them and give them more forms to fill out, because the opposition think that form-filling is productive. (Time expired)

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