David Leyonhjelm (NSW, Liberal Democratic Party) Share this | Hansard source

Tax cuts are usually popular, but many senators here oppose the tax cut we are discussing here today because it is a tax cut for companies. This is odd because company is not a dirty word. A company is just a gathering of humans for common cause or just for fun. Someone's company is a thing to be enjoyed. Other words for company include association, society, community, cooperative, kibbutz, union and collective. If only we reworded the tax cut we are debating today as a tax cut for collectives we might even get the support of our comrades in the Greens. For the Greens, a collective is good but a company is bad, even though they are both gatherings of people to achieve things that they couldn't do alone.

If anything, a company is better than a collective because a company is always thought of as a voluntary gathering of people, whereas a collective is sometimes used for a gathering achieved through duress and the use of force. A company consists of people. Any tax on a company is a tax on the people who own it, and the people who own Australian companies are overwhelmingly Australians. The great majority of Australians are part-owners of companies, either directly or through their superannuation fund. A company tax cut is a tax cut for the people of Australia.

Keeping a high company tax rate is not a smart way for low-income Australians to punish high-income Australians. We've got a progressive tax system that serves that dubious purpose. Given that we've already got a high top-income tax rate that punishes high-income Australians, keeping a high company tax rate just punishes low-income Australians. And keeping a high company tax rate does not punish foreigners. It just encourages them to keep their money at home or invest it elsewhere, rather than inject it into Australia. This means a shrinking of production in Australia, which hurts workers through fewer jobs and lower wages.

Given company tax cuts in the rest of the world, we are past the stage where a small-company tax cut under consideration here would boost jobs and wages. Now this small cut is necessary for us to save our current jobs and to stop our wages from dropping. The Liberal Democrats will of course support the small cut currently under consideration, but we must go further, such as by moving to the 20 per cent company tax rate that forms part of the Liberal Democrats' fully-funded, fully-costed policy platform—the costings for which are all published on the website of the Parliamentary Budget Office. Only with a competitive tax rate can we go beyond the current fear for our jobs and instead look forward to a better future: a future with more jobs and higher wages, and a future with more money in the pockets of the millions of citizens, both rich and poor, who have a stake in the companies of Australia.