Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. With wages growth at record lows under this government, why is this inept Prime Minister making working Australians pay $300 more a year in income tax while giving big business a $65 billion tax cut?

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

Few people in this chamber have been as eloquent in their support for cutting business taxes as the member for McMahon. He even wrote a book about it. He wrote a book about it, and right now, as we all know, he goes around corporate Australia trying to be the business-friendly face of the Labor Party, saying: 'Don't worry. We understand the need to be competitive. We understand it, and just wait. Just wait.' And of course he's had his coat-tails pulled by the left of the Labor Party because they are committed to higher business taxes, they're committed to higher taxes, and the result of that is making Australia uncompetitive.

Let's not kid ourselves. We've got to look at this in a clear-eyed way. Do we really think Australia will effectively compete for capital with the highest rate of company tax in the OECD?

The Labor Party may say in an ideal world, from their point of view, that company taxes should be higher. Well, we don't live in that fantasy world. We live in a world which is intensely competitive, and we have to fight for every dollar of investment and every single job. That's what my government does every day. That's why we have supported the policies that enabled 403,000 jobs last year.

I have just come from Washington, where I met with the National Governors Association. I can tell you that there are many people in the United States who recognise the advantage we have secured for our exporters with our trade agreements and with the TPP 11. If you are in the beef cattle industry in America, you are looking at paying substantially higher tariffs to get into the Japanese market than an Australian beef producer. They recognise that our government have been looking after our farmers and our exporters. Why have we done that? It's because we want to protect investment and jobs. We know that trade and open markets lead to investment, employment and lower taxes. Look at the reaction to President Trump's tax cuts in the United States. They are forecasting that it will add nearly one per cent to GDP. This is a massive adrenaline shot to their economy. They've done that.

What does the Labor Party want us to do? Nothing, as usual. They want us to abandon the TPP and abandon our exporters. They want us to abandon our businesses by not competing. We're for jobs. We're for investment. (Time expired)

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

My question is to the Minister for Small and Family Business, the Workplace and Deregulation. Will the minister please update the House on how implementing the coalition's enterprise tax plan in full will benefit small businesses across the nation, including in states such as Tasmania and in my electorate of Petrie? As the minister consults, what are the sector's views? How does this compare to alternative approaches?

Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party, Minister for Small and Family Business, the Workplace and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. Again, as I said last week, he has first-hand, grassroots experience beyond the front lines. His family business is now being run by his lovely wife.

I wanted to pick up on where the Prime Minister left off, because the misunderstanding of business on the other side goes further than what was being stated. The Treasurer and I on Friday visited Qantas, talking tax cuts. We found out from Alan Joyce, who has done a marvellous job reinvigorating that company, that some 3,000 SMEs are included in Qantas supply chains. This is the part that gets so often overlooked. Business does not operate in a vacuum. Business irrespective of size doesn't just engage with its customers, but more often than not their customers are other businesses. If you leave more money, more profits, from those businesses in their own bank accounts, they will invest, engaging with other SMEs.

Alan Joyce gave me a couple of particular examples of those SMEs in Tasmania. In Tasmania alone in the last 12 months, under the Treasurer and the Prime Minister's economic plan, 4,000 new businesses have opened up. Unemployment since the election of the Hodgman government has moved from 7½ per cent at the end of the Greens-Labor farce to now 5.8 per cent and 10,500 jobs have been created. Last year, despite 17,000 businesses not making one dollar in profit, they paid $575 million to around some 16,000 employees.

If you don't make the tax cuts and the reinvestment in those 17,000 businesses and 16,000 jobs, with some 6,000 more due to the excellent stewardship the Hodgman Liberal government has provided, the turnaround that has endured as a result will disappear most likely overnight, because they are not making a profit. They are paying them out of their own pockets.

I am asked what the alternative is. The alternative is the ACTU's Sally McManus coming up with Labor Party policy; the member for Gorton parroting it within 24 to 48 hours; and then within three to four months the Leader of the Opposition declares it as official Labor Party policy. The risk to small and family businesses in this country, and business irrespective of size, is that the opposition should take these benches, because if they did I fear for the jobs of those hard-working Australian working in small and family businesses, not now but well into the future.