Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

leaving it for us to come here with a mop and a bucket to try to clear up an over-$300-billion debt. You want to talk about fiscal management? And I heard the contribution from you, Senator. You want to talk about looking into the future? You should have been here and lectured the Labor Party when they got a clean balance sheet from John Howard and Peter Costello. You should have talked about how you don't make decisions that go into the future. They could have done with your advice about how they racked up this enormous debt.

We pride ourselves on good financial management, good fiscal constraints. It has taken us longer than it ever has before when we've taken over government from Labor and the Greens to try to get the budget back into some semblance of order. Even now it remains a struggle. And I can tell you this: there are only four ways money can be managed by a federal government. One is to borrow more, and nobody has an appetite for that. One is to charge more in taxes and for services. No-one has an appetite for that. The third category is to cut services. Well, everyone puts their hand up to cut services—until, of course, you reflect on a service that affects them. They always want you to cut a service that affects someone else: 'Get the people off the dole,' they say, and, 'Single mothers—punt them.' But if you start to talk about the pension or some other thing that affects them, of course, they have a different view of the planet. But it is the fourth one that is primary to all economic management. This parliament can't get us out of this quagmire that we're in. I've said it before: the only way we're going to get out of this quagmire is to stimulate the economy, where private sector corporations, small businesses and partnerships, in agriculture and elsewhere, pay more in tax receipts into this place, and then we have some expenditure restraints. That's the only way. There is no other formula. You can buy lottery tickets every fortnight on behalf of the government and try to get out of it that way, but that's not going to work.

Because of the limited time, I want to concentrate on the corporate tax cuts. I've been in business for 30 years, and there are not that many people in this place who've been in business for 30 years—and I mean reasonably sized businesses. I'll tell you what happens. This has been my experience. When I got to the end of the year and I'd spent all the money that I needed to spend to operate my business and I'd paid my income tax and other contingent liabilities and made provision for them and I had money left, I didn't pack up and go to Bali to play golf. I promise that in my case I did not.

Senator Sterle interjecting—

I was having a shot at you, Senator Sterle, but you've put yourself into the frame there! I didn't go and buy a bigger house. What I did was reinvest in my business. What were the implications of that? Oftentimes it increased employment so that I could increase the productivity of my companies and they, in turn, could prosper. So, people were employed. They prospered. They came off unemployment. They came into employment. It made a contribution to the receipts of the country. I tried to make myself more profitable and invested in that on many occasions—the advent of technologies, changes in practices. I invested heavily in that. That resulted in us doing a better job—more productivity, making some more money. And if it wasn't making more money then it was having more disposable income left at the end of the year. What did I do with that? I reinvested in the business again, as most businesses do. And when I employed more people I had to get them to do something. They went and poured concrete, or they drove a nail into a piece of timber, or they drove a truck, or they picked up some commodities and moved them from A to B. So every additional cent I got went back into the economy. That meant that the timber yard, the hardware store—all of these other businesses that relied on us as satellites to our business—also did better. They paid more income tax. They employed more people, and they, in turn, spent it.

I don't expect the Australian Labor Party or the Greens—the Australian Labor Party in particular—to understand these principles. Their specialty is to sit and wait until the private sector does well, and then they're waiting there at the door to take a slice of the action. That's what they do. They don't know how to build wealth. They don't know how to create strong business environments. They don't know how to manage the economy. They're waiting to take something off someone else for the effort, the investment and the risk they've made. These tax cuts are responsible, they're needed and, if you have a look at where they've happened in the world, they will promote an increase in our economy and give a benefit to the nation.