David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Fremantle for his five-minute diatribe on talking down the Australian economy. I might remind the people on the other side that we have delivered a growing economy and we have increased the pie, and that's why we've been able to balance our budget. We have the lowest number of people relying on income support, and we have 1.4 million people in jobs that weren't there before. We have grown the pie.

Rather than complaining and thinking that taxing your way to prosperity will ever occur, I need to remind the people on the other side in the Labor Party that they promised $387 billion of extra taxes—whether it was attacking people's investment in their investment properties by getting rid of negative gearing, attacking people's franking credits, changing super taxes or putting extra taxes on family business structures. They wanted to have regulations that would make the average car much more expensive, and the list goes on and on and on.

We have 1.4 million jobs that weren't there before. We have grown the pie. We have cut taxes, and cutting taxes—the income tax cuts as well as the small business company tax cuts that we've put through—means we have had more income. The biggest increase in income for the budget was out of company taxes. But we have cut the taxes. We've also had other tax initiatives, like the instant asset write-off. We've increased the scope of small businesses to up to $50 million of turnover so that they can get a better return on their investment. We were driving productivity changes by getting rid of unproductive union behaviour through the ensuring integrity bill, both in construction and in building schools, highways and roads. That would've raised productivity, but the other side knocked it out in the Senate.

Employment grew by two per cent. As I mentioned, we have the highest participation rate in many, many decades—66 per cent. The wage price index has grown by 2.2 per cent, greater than inflation. We've done this all at the same time as increasing spending on health and education. We've rolled out the NBN, and we have brought in electricity market reforms so that a lot of the rip-offs that the retailers were doing are canned. There are default market offers that are being established, which will give people the opportunity to change their plan and save money.

In the local, regional economy where I live, we have put significant investment into critical projects like the Forster Civic Precinct—a $6 million investment two years ago that has triggered an $80 million project in Forster. Cranes are across Forster, and many tradesman, all local, are working on a fantastic civic precinct development, followed by an aged and seniors living complex down on the waterfront. You have to see the extra jobs that have come out of the seeding of extra investment in an existing small business with a $2 million North Coast jobs and investment plan that promises up to 200 extra jobs in those businesses that were recipients of it. We have improved roads and bridges across the whole Lyne electorate. We have investments coming in Dungog: the Clarence Town bridge and Clarence Town Road. It's an absolute necessity that freight and safety be delivered through our road infrastructure.

We have the Inland Rail happening as well, $9.8 billion. I outlined all the investments in rail infrastructure across the nation. These are the infrastructure spends that we need to get an efficient trade set-up. We have free trade agreements, but we need to get our products to the ports cheaply and quickly. That's what the Inland Rail will do. It will also take a lot of freight movement off the highways in the tourism strip up the North Coast, all those B-doubles. Every train that goes up the Inland Rail will take 110 B-doubles off the freeway system. It will make it much safer and much more efficient.

The tax cuts are part of our plan. We're going to continue dropping taxes over the next couple of years for small businesses. The low income tax offset, up to $2,060 for couples, has been— (Time expired)

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