Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister outline to the House how the government's actions to keep our economy strong are working to keep Australia together, keep Australians safe and deliver the services that Australians expect? Prime Minister, what are the risks and what is at stake if this commitment is not adhered to in the future?

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

I thank the member for Robertson for her question. It was great to be up on the Central Coast—a shout-out to the project at the Central Coast. It was great to be at the Central Coast last week. It was great to be up there with Nathan, a small-business owner from Kombucha Zest, and of course Ryan and Chris, who run the Six String Brewing Company up there on the Central Coast. They are two of many small businesses on the Central Coast which are ensuring a strong economy on the Central Coast to support jobs on the Central Coast so people can get about their livelihood and live and work and play in the region that they love, like so many people across this country want to choose to do.

We're living up to our beliefs and we're living up to our principles when it comes to how we run our economic policies. We believe you need to back Australians who are having a go, and that in particular means small and family businesses. Our policies have seen, over the last five years, more than a million Australians get a job. They've seen more than 100,000 young Australians get a job in the last year alone. That is the highest rate of employment growth for young people on record. That's more than 100,000 young people whose lives have been changed as a result of them getting a job.

What do those beliefs and those principles mean? They mean we believe in lower taxes. We believe in lower taxes for small and family businesses. We believe in lower taxes for those who go out and earn a living as wage earners. We believe in lower taxes for those who have retired and are living off their retirement savings and not in hitting them with higher taxes. We believe in those who want to invest in their future and that they shouldn't have higher taxes. We believe in lower taxes so Australians can keep more of what they have earned to provide for their plans for their future.

We're investing in infrastructure, with $75 billion in rolling infrastructure projects. I was just over at the NorthLink project, in Western Australia, a few weeks ago, seeing the massive progress being done. We're expanding our markets with trade deals to ensure that our businesses, large and small, can expand their businesses into growing markets all around our region and all around our world. We're transitioning our industries through things like our defence industry plan, which is ensuring, through the supply chain, that companies that once were making vehicles are now making tank bonnets for armoured vehicles—like Penguin Composites, down in Tasmania, in the electorate of Braddon. And then we have our medical industry plan, which is ensuring that we're investing in future jobs in our fast-growing medical industry. One thing we're also doing is keeping militant unions out of the building and construction industry.

If the Labor Party were elected, you'd pay more tax, you'd pay more for your private health insurance, you'd pay more for your electricity bills and you'd pay more for what you're doing in building and construction— (Time expired)