Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Fairfax for his question and note his extensive experience in business before coming to this place and the fact that, in his electorate, more than 20,000 small businesses will be able to access the extended instant asset write-off announced in last year's budget and will get a tax cut from 1 July this year. We know that the Australian economy has faced a number of economic shocks that are outside of our control: the trade tensions between China and the United States, the drought, the bushfires, the floods and, most recently, the coronavirus. When I was recently at the G20 meeting in Riyadh, the impact of the coronavirus was the most significant topic for discussion. We know that it's affecting the global economy, with the IMF saying that economic growth will be down by about 0.1 of a percentage point this year, in 2020.

Here in Australia we've seen an impact as well—on agriculture, on tourism, on international students and in disruption to end-to-end supply chains across the economy. But our economy is resilient. The economic discipline that we have undertaken over the last six-and-a-bit years has put Australia in a strong place to weather these economic shocks. Unemployment today is lower than when we came to government. We've delivered the first balanced budget in 11 years and the biggest tax cuts in more than 20 years, and that is putting Australia in as strong a position as any other country to weather these economic shocks.

But I'm asked: are there any alternative approaches? There's a very innovative approach from the member for Rankin, who likes to tax a lot. His very innovative approach, which he gave when he was burnishing his leadership credentials the other day at The Australia Institute, is to deliver a 'wellbeing budget'. Gone are the days of measuring GDP. Gone are the days of measuring unemployment. Gone are the days of lower taxes and balanced budgets. What are you going to get from the member for Rankin's wellbeing budget? Double the hugs and triple the taxes. When Labor haven't delivered a balanced budget since 1989, when the Berlin Wall was still standing, of course they're going to look for something else to measure. We know the member for Rankin, with the member for McMahon, was co-architect of the $387 billion of higher taxes. Only the coalition can be trusted to create a stronger economy and more jobs.

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