Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

It was. In fact at one stage it was No. 2, but it's still recovering.

So they are a big export industry. All those industries ran off the tax. To have those industries succeed and remain competitive, you need a couple of things. We used to have low energy costs in this country. The lower taxes you can have helped that as well. We historically have had low energy; we don't anymore. Our company taxes are lower than they used to be. The company tax rate used to be over 50 per cent; it's now around the 25 to 30 per cent, depending on the size of the business, so they're a lot lower, but we certainly aren't as low as a lot of other countries. There are countries that we compete with around the world that have a company tax rate of 20 per cent, and some are as low as 15 per cent. We're not supercompetitive there, but we have to help make sure that our industries—because we want all those industries to make money. Those industries all pay a lot of tax. Those industries all pay a lot of people. They employ people, and those people pay pay-as-you-earn tax. A lot of the mining-type companies pay royalties. So we need them to remain competitive.

The $30,000 is obviously a very minor thing for those bigger companies, but anything we can do to make us a lower-cost country is a good thing. We won't talk about energy today, but certainly we need to maintain whatever energy cost price advantage we can. I support the fact that the government is extending this, but again I would encourage the government to increase the rate of this and always to look for our country's financial sustainability. We talk about sustainability in a lot of things, but to keep our companies sustainable, to keep income and the revenue this government connects sustainable, any lower taxes and tax write-offs we can give are a good thing.

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