Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. The revision by the IMF overnight reflects the uncertainty of the times in which we live. That uncertainty extends to the global environment, of course—which I'd hope the Leader of the Opposition would be familiar with. I certainly am; I have been for some time. We've been fashioning budgets for years now to deal with the increasing uncertainty there is in the global economic climate. He would also be familiar with the real impacts on the economy of the terrible drought that is now impacting on the Australian economy.

That is why, over successive budgets now, we have been putting in place the types of resilience measures that support our economy in times like this. The uncertainty of the times is reflected in what we have seen in the IMF's forecast revisions overnight, which obviously didn't just apply to Australia; they applied to a whole host of economies around the world. That is just a fact. But the truth remains that, while things are tough, Australia's economy is growing, second only to the United States, of all G7 nations.

There's a lot of work to do, but I can tell you what this time of uncertainty calls for. It calls for lower taxes, which is what we are doing. It calls for reducing the cost of doing business in this country by busting through regulations that hold projects back and by simplifying procedures in the industrial relations area to ensure that people can get employed. It requires us, as we are doing, to engage in reforms in our skills sector and to ensure that we are expanding our trade borders all around the world, as we have been doing over the last six years. It calls for us to invest $100 billion in infrastructure, as we are doing—and that's just on transport infrastructure, with almost $10 billion being invested just this year alone. And it calls on us to invest $200 billion out into the future on recapitalising our defence industries, as we heard yesterday out at Quickstep in south-western Sydney. Quickstep, an Australian company, is providing $250,000 worth of value-added into every Joint Strike Fighter that will be flown by every country around the world that purchases them.

They're the investment decisions that our government has taken to address these uncertain times. Those opposite think the answer is higher taxes, and they think higher taxes will have no impact on the economy. The Leader of the Opposition was asked today whether he thought Labor's $387 billion in higher taxes wouldn't have had an impact on the economy, and he said no. He said. 'No, I don't think they would.'

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