Clive Palmer (Fairfax, Palmer United Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think it is appropriate that I review and report to our members what Palmer United has achieved during this term in parliament. We have stopped the GP co-payment. We have stopped the changes to university. We stopped $10 billion cuts to social security, freed 436 children and 1,500 adults from detention on Christmas Island and resolved with Minister Scott Morrison 30,000 cases in detention. We have supported and introduced the safe haven enterprise visas. We voted in the Senate to save the low-income super for over two million Australians. We have kept the schoolkids bonus and the low-income support.

When the carbon tax was abolished, we stood firm in the Senate and reduced electricity prices by 10 per cent across Australia. In the Senate we passed and put up 15 amendments to direct action before it got through the Senate, and we have seen the changes that that has recently made. We have also saved the Climate Change Authority, the Clean Energy Corporation and ARENA, and so far we have kept the RET target as it is. The government also moved to fix pensions for all veterans over 55 years in accordance with our policy.

In Queensland we stopped the election of the Campbell Newman government. We have been responsible with the government for setting up two parliamentary inquiries: the Joint Select Committee on Trade and Investment Growth and the Joint Select Committee on the Australia Fund Establishment for drought relief. And, of course, there is the inquiry in the Senate into the Queensland government. We voted to support the abolition of the carbon tax and the mining tax and next week will introduce a private members' bill to deal with the foreign death penalty issues that were recently raised. We protected maritime workers and jobs.

We proved that Australia's debt was not the problem the government made it out to be. Cabinet adopted our policy to ban lobbyists from party positions after its election. On electoral reform we have been successful in having pens used instead of pencils.

In the Senate we voted to keep Qantas Australian owned, to stop changes to the income tax-free threshold and to stop the financial incentives to sell off public assets. We think we have saved jobs in the Australian offshore gas industry and have stopped the slashing of university research grants.

In October 2014, the IMF estimated that the Australian government's net debt would be 16.6 per cent of GDP in 2015, below the 74.1 per cent forecast for advanced economies. Under Prime Minister Menzies's government our national debt was around 40 per cent, and Australia today has the largest pool of funds under fund management, third largest in the world and the largest in the Australian region, so we have plenty of capital. With 23 years of consecutive economic growth, labour productivity has recorded a compound annual growth rate of 1.8 per cent per annum while real unit labour costs have fallen by 0.5 per cent every year to make Australia more competitive.

Australia has one of the highest entry rates into tertiary education in the world, at 102 per cent including international students, above the OECD average of 58 per cent. High rates of tertiary education underpin Australia's position as the No. 1 developed country in terms of real GDP growth over the last 20 years.

Australia has the second largest stock market in the Asian region and the eighth largest in the world. Australia's market capitalisation on free-floating shares is greater than China's, double Hong Kong's and around four times the market capitalisation of Singapore. Our $1.6 trillion superannuation system is the fourth largest in the world and is a major driver behind Australia's globally significant funds management industry. This will grow to $7.6 trillion in funds, or 180 per cent of GDP, over the next two decades. We do not need to tamper with the pension. Australians provide for their own long-term requirements through their own efforts and their superannuation.

We need to stimulate Australia. It is not a stimulus to reduce company tax by 1.5 per cent. Small businesses have no profitability so do not worry about paying tax. Without stimulating demand, there is no way that any tax incentive can work. The Australian government is the main practitioner of bankruptcy and company liquidations across Australia. As companies close, employees lose their jobs, the government loses group tax and people transfer from gainful employment to Centrelink. We need to protect the Australian people and their jobs. Let's protect what the country stands for. We need to have a chapter 11 like they have in the US: when companies fail, businesses continue so that people and families are kept in their jobs. We need to support regional Australia by introducing a zonal taxation system to decentralise Australia and maximise the growth in regional areas.

Japan has become the world's third largest economy by processing Australian resources. The cost of energy in Japan is more expensive, and Japan suffers the tyranny of distance. Wages are higher. (Time expired)