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

Here we go again. They are just so negative. JobKeeper was a vital lifeline for millions of Australians, and all those opposite are doing now is trying to tear down what was the economic saviour of our nation's economy during the first COVID pandemic wave. Through the JobKeeper scheme, 3.8 million Australians were kept in employment. One million businesses are still alive and employing people because of the scheme. Ninety per cent of these businesses were microbusinesses with a turnover of less than $2 million, and eight per cent of them were small and medium enterprises, yet those opposite pick the very end of the bell curve to make out that the whole program was hopeless. They are such hypocrites. They were in favour of it. The member for Rankin tries to claim credit for it, but now he's here trying to tear it down—for goodness sake! Hypocrisy, thy name is 'over there'. There were 1.3 million people who returned to work within two months. That's how good the program was.

Unemployment after the program dropped to 4.6 per cent, the lowest in over a decade. I think it's been a very good program.

Mr Pitt interjecting—

The member for Hinkler realises that. He's been in business. He knows what businesses have gone through. It was an economic lifeline for the whole nation—and here Labor are, currying favour. What they're not telling you people out there is that up in the Senate they're trying to get the private tax details of 10,000 people disclosed. That is counter to the whole basis of our taxation system. People self-report their tax measures under the tax administration act. As a former barrister, Deputy Speaker Wallace, you understand that privacy provisions in that act are essential for the working of our whole tax system. We have got a great tax system. Asking for documents is just outrageous, and they're trying to make it retrospective. All the COVID economic support packages had in the explanatory memorandum that it was all confidential. In a double whammy, they're going to just retrospectively try and get it away. It's none of the headline-grabbing stuff that they're after; they just want to get into people's tax details. Like I said, 90 per cent were microbusinesses, eight per cent of them were small and medium enterprises—mum-and-dad family businesses: the local publican, the local—

An opposition member interjecting—

My goodness. As well as JobKeeper, we had other programs. That's why we have had these outstanding economic responses. It was projected that our GDP was going to go down by 20 per cent. It was nowhere near that. It was so much better than OECD countries and other countries around the world, and we have got more people in employment. I just checked; we have got 166,000 more people in employment after the pandemic. These next figures will probably be different—I acknowledge that—because the second wave has put a dent in that amazing recovery, but that's why we have put the COVID disaster payment on the line and the business support payments that we're rolling out through the state governments. Through HomeBuilder we had a housing construction boom until this latest shut down. We've had the JobMaker hiring credit getting people off JobSeeker and back into a job.

We have been boosting apprenticeships by $7,000 per quarter so that people can put on new apprentices. We're using them because of the housing construction boom. Having worked in that industry yourself, Deputy Speaker, you'll appreciate that. It takes a while to get the value out of apprentices. Once they've had a couple of years, they are away and they're launched into a job for the rest of their lives. We have had the biggest rise in apprenticeships in this country, off the back of these pandemic measures. On job training, we've got more TAFE and short courses happening around the country.

We've had other things to benefit big companies, small companies and mum-and-dad businesses. We have continued the temporary full expensing provision so that we have eligible depreciable assets turning up in businesses to make them more efficient. We've had the loss carry-back provisions that have also benefitted businesses, and the list goes on.

The outcome is that we have weathered this economic storm very well. By any rational analysis of any other country in the world, we have done really well. We are not saying it's perfect, but when you consider the destruction of economies in Europe, in Britain, in the US, in South America and in Asia, the same thing has happened. When you have a pandemic, all these things happen, and the speed at which we rolled out this program was exceptional. As I said, the member for Rankin is trying to claim credit for it and now he's trying to tear it down. I just don't follow these people. I don't think anyone on this side is going to support retrospectively changing the law and claiming access to 10,000 taxpayers' private tax details. No-one will be supporting this in the suburbs, in the cities, out in the country. These people have no idea. Mum-and-dad businesses, big employers and small employers report their tax details honestly 99 per cent of the time. All these provisions have been looked at by the Australian National Audit Office, and they haven't found any malfeasance.

Those opposite just don't like the idea that big businesses or small businesses are making a profit. Profit is not a dirty word, and, as we have seen, this is a rolling plan to get our economy back on track. The stimulus from the leftover profit will be needed as we come out of this pandemic. We want to get our economy back, we want to get our freedoms back—our freedom of association, our freedom to run businesses—and we have a plan and we're rolling it out. The member for Hinkler is going to have a boom in his electorate, and there will be a boom in Sydney. We have a big economy waiting to go, and the only team in this building that has a plan to get that happening is on this side of the House. I watched Insiders too. The other side has no plan. They just nitpick about negative things. Really, it is a sad state because they like complaining, but they have no plan, as the member for New England pointed out. When I watched Insiders on Sunday, I thought there's going to be a gotcha moment and we'd see that they'd decided to do X, Y or Z. No, that was absent.

JobKeeper was a great program, so was the support for pensioners. All those tax incentives to keep cash flow going were great plans and they delivered a great outcome for the nation. By all accounts there is no way we will be breaking that privacy position. We won't be breaking the laws that have run the tax system. This is just an opportunistic attempt by opposition and crossbench members in the Senate to curry favour because they're trying to politicise the very nature of our tax system, masqueraded as transparency. No, it's an attempt to use private tax information to cherrypick successful businesses and mum-and-dad businesses that have weathered the storm. Businesses across the nation deserve the right to privacy regarding their tax details. None of us on this side will ever break that principle.

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