Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

At the last election, what did we see? The shadow assistant minister has raised a litany of so-called problems, but what was the Labor Party prescription to those so-called issues in our economy? Universally, there were two prescriptions from the Labor Party. The first was higher taxes. If it moved, they taxed it, whether it was retirees, whether it was superannuation, whether it was small businesses or whether it was family trusts. If it moved, the Labor Party wanted to tax it. The second prescription from the Labor Party was higher spending. That's all we saw from the Labor Party, which again proved that Labor have not learnt the lessons many Australians hoped they would have learnt from the time they were in government.

The shadow assistant minister bemoans having unemployment in the fives, as he calls it. He doesn't think it's good enough to have unemployment at 5.2 per cent, yet when we took office from the government he was a member of, unemployment was at 5.7 per cent. Was the shadow assistant minister at that time getting up in the parliament and arguing how 5.7 per cent was terrible? Or how a worsening budget position, taking the endowment of the Howard government—$70 billion in the bank and no net debt—to over a quarter of a trillion dollars of debt was such a terrible thing? Or how slowing GDP growth was such a terrible thing? Well, I haven't searched the Hansard, but I suspect the shadow assistant minister never made such speeches in this parliament.

Let's look at some of the achievements that are owned by all Australians. Unlike many people opposite, we don't own the achievements of Australians, but we certainly take credit for creating an economic environment of stability and certainty and calmness that provides an environment to enable Australians to create wealth for themselves, their families and their businesses. We will deliver a surplus this year—extraordinarily important. It's extraordinarily important that the government says to Australians that our budget is no different to your household and no different to your business. You cannot keep borrowing endlessly, year on year, as the Labor Party seems to suggest you can. We don't take the approach of the Labor Party, which absolutely panics, as we saw time and time again in their lamentable period in government, which was what took us to the debt levels that we ultimately inherited.

Again: jobs growth. It's very interesting that the shadow assistant minister skirted over the fact that 1.4 million jobs have been created. He tries to mock the government when we say that the best form of welfare is a job. And not just welfare in material terms but welfare in the most important ways: the dignity of having a job and the dignity of achieving something and furthering your own life and the life of your family. Of course having a job is the best form of welfare. To hear the shadow assistant minister criticising that self-evident fact highlights that, five months later, this tortured process that the Labor Party are going through is certainly not at its end. The shadow assistant minister was part of the former Labor economic team which was supposedly ready to govern. The shadow economic team whose prescription for every single ill in this country, in their view, was higher taxes—if it moves, tax it—and to spend more. We believe that 1.4 million jobs is an absolutely extraordinary effort.

I had the honour of representing Australia at the APEC Finance Ministers' meeting in Santiago just last week to meet many of our counterparts. Many of our trading partners would often remark on Australia's economic success—over many years; we can't take credit for 28 years of uninterrupted economic growth. We can certainly take a great deal of credit, as Liberals and Nationals, for setting up the economy as we did in the Howard and Costello government. There was a blip on the radar with the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd government and that lamentable period in office, but equilibrium is now back. Our trading partners asked about our jobs growth. They didn't criticise our jobs growth. What chutzpah from the shadow assistant minister to criticise 5.2 per cent unemployment, when the government he was a part of had unemployment at 5.7 per cent. That's many hundreds of thousands of additional people who couldn't get a job. Where were those speeches then? We believe that the outlook for jobs growth is good.

There are challenges in our economy, no doubt. There are always challenges. The next challenge is always just around the corner. We all have to admit that. There is no doubt that global trading volumes are under significant pressure. There are aspects of confidence in some parts of the economy that of course we would like to be better. But the Labor Party prescription to all of those problems was to tax Australians more. It was repudiated at the election in the strongest possible way. The speech from the shadow assistant minister that we just heard indicates to me that the Labor Party have not learnt their lesson.

Since the election, Australians have seen this government deliver on a policy that we spoke about day in, day out: personal income tax cuts. It is the most significant structural reform to our tax system that we have seen for decades. It will ensure that, by the time all of the personal income tax cuts are through, 94 per cent of Australians will not pay a higher marginal tax rate than 30c in the dollar. In fact, we've already seen, as of this week, tax refunds flowing to people's bank accounts in the order of about $17 billion to $18 billion. That's money in Australians' pockets, not in the government's.

We want to be able to deliver a balanced budget, to be able to ensure that we have uninterrupted economic growth for our 29th year, to ensure that people can get personal income tax cuts and to ensure that there are opportunities for jobs out there. Of course we have sympathy when the shadow assistant minister refers to a specific case study of an individual who, through difficult circumstances, finds it's hard to get a job. But is the shadow assistant minister suggesting that if the Labor Party were in government there would be nobody struggling to find a job? Is that what the shadow assistant minister is seriously saying, particularly when the last time they were in government—and he was a member of that government—unemployment was higher than it is today?

I say to the shadow assistant minister: don't come to the dispatch box and make ridiculous statements like that. Let's be adults. Be an adult about it. We are creating an environment for Australians that has some of the best opportunities in the world. Would we like it to be better? Of course. Are we working every day to make it better? Yes. Should the Labor Party support the government in our endeavours? Of course they should. Should the Labor Party accept that their economic record over decades is so woeful that they should back us in, because we know more? The record speaks for itself.

Mr Brian Mitchell interjecting—

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