Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Community Housing, Homelessness and Community Services) Share this | Hansard source

I just wanted to quickly talk about Memories of an Angel. Today I'm wearing the blue and pink ribbon. I don't always wear these, but I think it's important to mention that everyone here in the parliament today is with those people who have suffered pregnancy and infant loss. We know the member for Longman himself mentioned in his maiden speech losing a baby at a very young age, and we think of him and others. A woman in my electorate recently came to see me; she had lost a baby just a week before the cut-off after which she could have had a funeral for that baby, and she was dealing with a lot of grief over that. I just want to say on behalf of the government and the parliament that we are with those people today.

The opposition want to talk here about the pressing needs of the nation, and that's great. I want to talk about the pressing needs of the nation today as well. We heard the Treasurer talk about the 1.4 million new jobs created in this country since 2013. That's a pressing need for those people not just in my electorate but right around the country. People want to have work. They don't want to be dependent on handouts from governments—absolutely not. But what do we hear from the opposition leader? In the 10 minutes that he has just rattled on here before us he has been talking down the economy. That's all we hear from those opposite. That's what we hear from the Leader of the Opposition—talking down the economy—when, in fact, our economy is continuing to grow. It's going well.

From running a small family business before coming into this place, I know that at times business can be tough. The government is continuing to support business. We want to continue to help them because we know that that's where the jobs are created. Most jobs have been created in the small and medium family sized businesses over the last few years, primarily because of the government's tax cuts—reducing tax from 30 per cent to 25 per cent for industry. But what do we hear from those opposite? As the member for Forrest would know, during the whole last term, they talked down those tax cuts. They said that they were actually going to reintroduce higher taxes on businesses over $2 million. That was their policy right up to a few weeks before the last election, and then all of a sudden they did a dramatic turnaround.

In the May election this year, many of those opposite were very arrogant and believed that they would win. They were getting their photos taken and trash talking people on our side and saying, 'Well, we won't see you here next time.' They were very, very arrogant. Well, the people spoke, just a few months ago, in May, and delivered a third term for the coalition government. Why was that? It was partly because of Labor's massive, high-taxing agenda on everyone from pensioners and retirees right through to businesses and people who were renting, who would have seen their rents go up—and it goes on and on.

But what have we been doing? In June this year, we saw the Prime Minister reach out to our Pacific neighbours. He visited the Solomon Islands and Fiji and he has recently come back from the USA, where the President there rolled out the welcome mat for him—something he hasn't done for many other neighbours. Our Prime Minister visited Japan in June as well. June was a great month. We all remember Ash Barty winning the French Open. It was a fantastic month. The Prime Minister has been reaching out to our neighbours and saying that we want to work cooperatively with them.

In July we saw massive tax cuts that were put through this place for people right across the nation—tax cuts that are putting more dollars in their own pockets. But what did this Leader of the Opposition and members of the Labor Party want to do? They wanted to increase taxes on all Australians right across the board, and they particularly wanted to increase income tax.

The opposition leader spoke today about net debt, but didn't speak about the fact that there was no debt at all when John Howard left office and all of a sudden, under the six years of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years, they had billions and billions in deficits.

Mr Brendan O'Connor interjecting—

Have you heard of something called interest repayments?

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