Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Despite company profits increasing by 20 per cent last year but average wages for Australians only growing by just two per cent, every member of this government voted five times to give big business a $65 billion corporate tax cut. Why does every member of the government only ever look after the big end of town and ignore ordinary workers struggling with a record low wages growth?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government can point to one policy after another that is delivering stronger economic growth and more jobs. We can point to those. And we've seen 403,000 jobs created last year. The Leader of the Opposition said 2017 was going to be about 'jobs, jobs, jobs'. Well the government delivered on jobs, and we have more to do. But we need to give business the incentive to invest; we need to encourage the private sector. These are the same private sector businesses that the Leader of the Opposition, in his latest incarnation as a political populist whatever—he's impersonating Jeremy Corbyn at the moment—now wants to declare a war on. I'll remind the Leader of the Opposition that there was a time when he knew that cutting tax on businesses created more jobs. He said so, and he and all of his side of politics voted for it again and again because it was common sense and orthodox economics.

But let's look at what he's opposed. He opposed the tax cuts for small and medium-sized family businesses that are now creating hundreds of thousands of jobs. He voted against them. He opposed the legislation that funds every school according to need. For the first time there is national, consistent needs-based funding, as recommended by David Gonski. He voted against that. He voted against the childcare reforms that will deliver benefits to one million Australian families on lower and lower-middle incomes and enable them to stay in the workforce, that will enable them to get that balance of work and family and stay connected to the workforce. That extraordinary reform, rationalising the childcare subsidy system, providing substantial additional money and real equity and availability, was opposed by Labor.

He opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Just think about this: this is a trade deal which opens up even wider existing markets that we have access to and opens up a whole range of new markets. It will create thousands of jobs, just like the other trade deals Labor's opposed. Now when the United States pulled out, what did the Leader of the Opposition say? He said: 'Just throw in the towel. Give up.' 'Give up,' he said. He wanted to give up on Australian jobs, give up on Australian businesses, give up on Australian investors. Giving up on Australia is his way; it's not our way. We stuck with it. We stuck with it, we worked hard and the TPP 11 is now happening without the US. We'd rather they were there, but it'll still create thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of opportunity for Australian businesses. (Time expired)