Chris Crewther (Dunkley, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer update the House on the government's efforts to arrest the debt, increase wages for hardworking Australians and protect our AAA credit rating? How will the passage of the Australian Building and Construction Commission bill assist in this endeavour?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Dunkley for his question and for his keen interest in ensuring that Australians can be supported by a government that has a national economic plan that is driving increases in job numbers and increases in economic growth. In fact we are leading the advanced world when it comes to economic growth and we will continue to do that with the policies and commitments that we outlined in the budget this year and continue to pass through the parliament. But, in particular, in addition to ensuring that the government lives within its means, you need to drive policies that improve productivity. In this place we have heard about the lawlessness, the thuggery and the militant trade unions that today have had a very bad day, because the Australian Building and Construction Commission bill has been passed in the other place, which will ensure that the rule of law will return to our building and construction sites.

This is an important productivity improvement. It is something that is good news for the one million Australians who work in the Australian construction industry. It is why our enterprise tax plan is designed to particularly support small businesses so that they can give Australians working in those businesses more hours and more opportunities to earn more to ensure that they can support their own standards of living. That is why we have taken into this place the enterprise tax plan, which is also opposed by those opposite.

In addition to that, by getting the budget under control, by ensuring that we get expenditure under control—and we have had over $20 billion of measures already, half of those on expenditure measures passed through the parliament—means that we are getting on with the job. We also have to protect the integrity of the taxpayers. It was about this time last year that those opposite voted against tax integrity measures that would ensure that multinationals paid their fair share of tax. That anniversary comes up on 2 December, when those opposite voted against multinationals paying their fair share of tax. And in this parliament in this week they are standing up for the rights of foreign workers, with the 'Federated Union of Foreign Workers' representatives who sit opposite.

Those opposite wanted to protect multinationals from paying their fair share of tax and now they want foreign workers to pay a lower rate of tax than Australian workers do. An Australian today on an average employee's wage pays an average rate of tax of 23.8 per cent. Under their policy, a backpacker, a foreign worker, coming to this country will pay an average rate of tax of 10.5 per cent. So they want Australians to pay twice the rate of tax of a backpacker to pay for their foreign workers' tax cut. That is not how you run a strong economy for Australian workers.