Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Bushby for a policy related question. The Turnbull government is getting on with the job of implementing our national economic plan for jobs and growth. Our economy is an economy in transition. After a period of unprecedented and historic record investment in construction activity related to our resource sector, we do need to transition into a more diversified economy with broader drivers of growth. A key component of our national economic plan for jobs and growth is to ensure that our tax system is more growth friendly.

Today the Senate voted to pass the Turnbull government's personal income tax cuts: tax cuts for hard-working families across Australia providing incentive for 3.1 million hard-working Australians to work harder and make that extra effort without being penalised by a higher tax burden. We would like to thank the Labor opposition, One Nation and other representatives in the Senate for joining in with the Liberal-National Party government's commitment for lower taxes for hard-working families. But there is more work to be done in order to ensure that our economy can successfully transition to a stronger, more diversified economy. We need to ensure that we have a more competitive business tax rate. We need to ensure that the parliament and the Senate also pass our Ten Year Enterprise Tax Plan, which will deliver tax cuts initially for 3.2 million small businesses that employ 5.5 million Australians. All businesses with an annual turnover of less than $10 million would, of course, benefit from a reduced corporate tax rate of 27.5 per cent from 1 July 2016 onwards, and over time that would be rolled out to more and more enterprises and larger businesses. (Time expired)