Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer inform the House of the benefits of the government's economic plan to the people of Western Australia and explain how a stronger budget will benefit families in Canning?

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Swan for that question. The way to help the people of Canning is to elect a Liberal on Saturday. That is the way to do it. Our candidate, Andrew Hastie, is a man of good repute. He also understands that, when Labor was last in office, on average 2,000 jobs were created every month, but that now, under us, 21,000 jobs have been created every month. That is real and that is tangible for the people of Western Australia. It means that over 32,000 jobs have been created in Western Australia alone since we came to government. The way to get there is to support the free trade agreement with China which will open up export opportunities and new jobs and, importantly, to get rid of the taxes: the carbon tax, the mining tax, the bank deposits tax—the piggy bank tax that the Leader of the Opposition particularly liked—the car manufacturing tax and so on.

Yesterday in this place I was asked a question by someone who, I confess to my colleagues, I was not very familiar with: Andrew Leigh, the member for Fraser and shadow Assistant Treasurer. After the question yesterday, I thought to myself, 'I have to get to know this guy a little bit better.' So I went and did a little bit of research and I found this op-ed by the shadow Assistant Treasurer in The Australian. The headline is 'Pining for the good old carbon tax and the mining tax'. It is signed by Andrew Leigh and in it he says 'The bottom line is this: if the Abbott Government hadn’t scrapped the carbon price and the mining tax, they would have got to surplus.' I thought: 'This is a cracker—we have finally found an honourable heir to the member for Lilley. We have finally found someone who is picking up the baton of the member for Lilley.'

I wanted to dig a little bit deeper and I found a speech by the member for Fraser. It is titled: 'With taxes, we build society.' But it gets better—I thought this was going to be compelling, so I started reading the speech. It starts like this:

Eight score years ago—

He must think he is Abraham Lincoln; the Gettysburg Address—

about 45 kilometres south-west of where we meet today, people gathered for a conversation about tax.

Well, I say to you now: you now have the economic talent of the Labor Party writing the big speeches, lying upside down in a Manuka float tank!