Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment. Will the minister please outline to the House the importance of investment to create jobs and ease cost-of-living pressures for all Australians. Is the minister aware of any threats to investment opportunities?

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Petrie for his question. I know he is particularly concerned about jobs and easing the cost-of-living pressures in his community, as indeed we all are. He is a very good member, the member for Petrie. In fact he got a swing to him at the last election, which reinforces how in touch he is with his electorate. He has done an outstanding job, and I congratulate him.

Investment is crucial to making sure that Australia continues to see improvement in terms of job opportunities and, of course, reduction in cost-of-living pressures. In fact, as a country, we have the sixth largest landmass in the world and the 13th biggest economy, and we rank only 52nd by population. As a large country with a small population, we are always going to be generating more opportunities for investment than we can personally fund as a country in our own right. Investment has played a critical role. For the last 25 years of Australia's uninterrupted economic growth—and we are into our 26th now—we have relied on investment, with a big chunk of that coming in the form of foreign investment. Thirty-seven per cent of Australia's top 2,000 companies are foreign owned, with some $1.1 trillion in assets and revenue of some $630 billion. And, of course, they pay a substantial amount of company tax. They employ more than 700,000 Australians, so they certainly play a very critical role. We know from modelling that every billion dollars of investment will generate around 1,000 jobs for Australians. Making sure that investment flows and that we keep downward pressure on the cost of living is crucial to making sure that we keep electricity prices down.

We know that households are concerned about their bills. Households are concerned to know what the next bill is going to look like. There are a few on the other side of the House who would like to know what the next bill is going to look like as well—perhaps the member for Sydney and the member for Grayndler are wondering about the next bill—but we on this side of the chamber are concerned with making sure that we are dedicated to prudent economic management.

What we know about the Labor side is that not just are they good at blackouts; Labor are also very good at black holes. It is blackouts and black holes that are Labor's specialties, and we saw it in their approach this morning. When the Leader of the Opposition was asked on radio how he was going to pay for the NDIS, he had no response. When he was asked four times how Labor were going to pay for their renewable energy target, he had no response. It seems the Labor Party think they can buy their way out of their financial problems with counterfeit bills, but counterfeit bills are not a strategy for government. The member opposite can sit there with his 'resting Bill face', pretending he is not paying attention, but we know the facts about what it is that Labor will do.