Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this matter of public importance; it is a matter of significant public importance. It is evident from the contribution by Senator Carr that, yes, those on that side have a very different approach to the way the country should run from the approach of we on this side. I acknowledge that up-front.

Senator Carr spent much of his contribution talking about whether there was a plan for industry, a plan for the economy, a plan for jobs in Australia. Yes, we have a plan. We have a plan to create one of the world's most highly productive and highly competitive economies. Australia has a strong economic base. We have a sound future. We have much that we can build upon and grow jobs upon, as we have done through different waves of economic transformation in this country over decades.

That is what we will do, and we will do it by getting the fundamentals right across every stretch and every part of the economy that we possibly can: by making Australia a lower-taxing country, where it is actually more competitive for people to do business; by making Australia a lighter-regulatory country; and by making Australia a country that is attractive in which to invest, whether you are a small business or a large business and whether you are an Australian-owned business or a multinational business.

We will not be adopting what seems to be Senator Carr's command-and-control approach to economic planning. That is the old socialist approach, which is no surprise coming from Senator Carr. What is the surprise though is that his approach, his command-and-control approach to economic planning and to industry planning, seems basically to be, 'We should give more money to foreign multinationals to prop up jobs here.' That seems to be the genesis of Senator Carr's argument. Boil it all down and that is what his industry planning is. That is certainly what it was throughout his time as industry minister. Throughout his time as industry minister, time and time again it was simply, 'Let's just give more money, because that will fix the problem.'

It was too bad if you were a small business who could not get the ear of government; you did not get any more money in those circumstances. It was too bad if you were somebody who was not from one of the previous government's pet, favoured industries—most likely a highly unionised industry of the previous governments—because you would not get any more money. But if you were able to make a lot more noise, if you were one of the favoured industries and if you were a highly unionised industry, then there was every chance that you could manage to get from the Labor government a bit more money that could go back to your shareholders overseas.

That is their approach. Our approach is different. Our approach is fundamentally to ensure Australia is as productive, competitive and efficient as we can possibly be so that this country can compete on the world stage and grow new jobs in the future. How are we going about doing that? Of course, we have laid out some plans already. We laid them out before the election and we are seeking to implement them.

We will grow new jobs, first and foremost, by reducing the tax base that is affecting manufacturing in particular but also a whole range of industries. If the Labor Party would just get out of our way, we could have repealed the carbon tax already. It is a tax that had a $460 million impact on the automotive industry that Senator Carr was just bemoaning. The carbon tax was a $460 million impact imposed upon that industry by the previous government, which we have been seeking to remove. But, no, they would have us leave the tax there, but give money away instead.

We are seeking to scrap the mining tax. We are seeking to restore the Australian Building and Construction Commission. Why? Because that can help drive greater productivity across the Australian economy. By reducing the rorts, the corruption and the type of activities that some of Senator Carr's union mates undertake, we can make sure that we have a far more competitive environment in that sector.

We are going to continue to cut taxes to make Australia a more competitive place to invest. That is why we have promised a 1½ per cent cut to the company tax rate to 28.5 per cent, making Australia—in our region and in the world—a more attractive place in which to invest for all businesses, not just those who get handouts. We have committed to reducing the amount of red tape, green tape, bureaucracy and regulatory hurdles that businesses face, to the tune of $1 billion a year. Shortly, this parliament will sit on dedicated days to consider the repeal and winding back of the legislation and the red tape that strangles business investment all too much.

So we absolutely have a plan. We have a far clearer plan than those who went before us, whose plan was simply a muddled and befuddled approach of launching new packages every couple of years, changing those packages and stripping money from one to give to another. We all remember the Green Car Innovation Fund: it came and it went, it had money and it did not have money. Little wonder that industries were confused about what they were getting!

What industry will get from our government are the lowest taxes we can create, the lightest regulatory touch we can create and the best opportunities for them to invest that we can create. That is what they will get from us. They will get policy certainty and they will get a government that knows in which direction it wants to take the economy. And we will keep going in that direction to make sure we create the best opportunities for job creation into the future.

You would be forgiven—listening to Senator Carr, Mr Shorten and all of those opposite—for thinking that somehow everything was shipshape in the automotive industry on 7 September 2013 when they lost government. You would be forgiven for thinking there were no issues, there had been no problems and that everything was going along swimmingly well. If you listen to them today you hear them say, 'You should have been able to prevent the closure of Toyota. You should have been able to prevent the closure of Holden.'

What about in May last year, when Ford announced their closure? What about that one? Should that have been preventable when it happened under the previous government? What about in 2008, when Mitsubishi closed its doors? Was that preventable, when it, too, happened under the previous government? The truth of the matter is that the rot in the automotive industry set in under the previous government. The critical mass for the industry was lost under the previous government. By the time we came to power, there were just two automotive manufacturers left in this country.

The critical mass had already been undermined. There was already a huge amount of debate about whether it would be possible to sustain just two manufacturers, about the scope of bailouts that would be required to do that, and about the cost and whether it would be worthwhile. During the time of the previous government, we saw the number of cars made locally in Australia, in the period between 2007 and 2013, reduced by one third. We saw a 25 per cent job reduction in that time.

Yet through that same period of time, we saw ever more money being given to the automotive industry. We saw more money being paid to make fewer cars and to sustain fewer jobs. It sounds like something out of Catch-22, where they paid Major Major not to grow alfalfa sprouts. It sounds like an EU subsidy arrangement, where they pay the farmers not to grow something. The arrangement in Australia under the Labor Party was that we kept paying more for automotive industry companies to employ fewer people and make fewer cars. That is no way to grow your economy, because over time you have fewer people employed and, of course, you have ever-mounting debt and tax burden on the rest of the economy. The problem with Labor's approach compared to ours is that the only way you pay those big multinationals is to tax everybody else more. The small businesses who could never get handouts from Labor had to pay more tax so that Labor could give more money away to the big businesses, who were shrinking anyway. It made no sense then and it would make no sense to continue with it now. It would truly be a case of throwing good money after bad.

That is why we have given a commitment to support the entire Australian economy and to make sure that every Australian business gets a chance to be as competitive as it possibly can. That is why we will be making sure that, as we move forward, we support investment absolutely, in helping those workers, in helping the communities adjust, in making sure the support is there for those in my home state and in Senator Carr's home state, which are particularly affected by the loss of these jobs, so that they can transform. But it has happened before. We have seen significant changes in the Australian economy over the last few decades and, with the policy settings of this government, we will successfully transition to better days again.