Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer remind the House how the Morrison government's ongoing commitment to delivering lower taxes will strengthen our economic rebound as COVID-19 restrictions ease? Is the Treasurer aware of any alternative policies?

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for O'Connor for his question and acknowledge him as a third-generation wheat farmer—and with an electorate that's more than 866,000 square kilometres. It's more than three times larger than the state of Victoria, more than 11 times larger than the state of Tasmania, and it's a powerhouse for mining, for agriculture and for tourism. And the member for O'Connor, like others on this side of the House, understands that we stand for more jobs and lower taxes.

Now, the member for Rankin, the shadow Treasurer, said last year that the government 'should be judged on what happens to unemployment'. They were his words: the government should be judged on what happens to unemployment. The member for Rankin said the most important test of this government's management of recession is what happens to jobs. Well, I can inform the member for Rankin, as I can inform the rest of the House, that, when we came to government, the unemployment rate was 5.7 per cent and today it's 4.6 per cent. An additional 1.4 million people are in work than there were when we came to government, and we know that, of those 1.4 million jobs, 58 per cent went to women.

We're also focused on driving down taxes and we've legislated through the parliament more than $300 billion of income tax cuts. So, if you're a teacher or a tradie on $60,000 a year, you pay $6,480 less tax as a result of the tax cuts that we've legislated through the last three budgets alone. Our immediate expensing provisions have helped drive increased investment in machinery and in equipment, whether it's a farmer getting a new harvester or a tradie getting new tools. We've also put in place other tax incentives, like cutting the company tax rate down to 25 per cent for businesses with a turnover of $50 million or less. Our tax cuts, together with our infrastructure programs, our other measures to cut red tape, what we've done on insolvency, what we've been doing on digital platforms, what we've been doing on foreign investment with historic reforms—these are all designed to create more jobs across the economy.

But we know that those opposite only stand for higher taxes and more spending. We saw that at the last election, with $387 billion of higher taxes that they took to the Australian people. The member for McMahon said to the Australian people, 'If you don't like our tax policies don't vote for them.' They took him literally. And they know that we on this side of the House stand for more jobs and lower taxes, and that we have delivered exactly that.