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

No, that is not true. That is actually not true. Every single business in Longman will benefit, because benefits in Australia don't operate in isolation. Every single business in Australia does business with other businesses. Not only do they do business with other businesses but as the economy does better and as more jobs are being created consumers will access the products and services of every single business in Longman. A weaker economy means less business for the businesses in Longman. Indeed, the biggest businesses in Australia in many ways are on the frontline of global competition. They all started as a small business. There is a great Queensland business that started as a small business with three employees. It's called Qantas—three employees, in Longreach, in a shed, in the heat; that's where they started their business. Today they employ 30,000 people. Today they are buying products and services from 3,000 small- and medium-size businesses across Australia, including across Queensland. If we make it harder for Qantas to compete because we impose higher taxes on them than are faced by their competitors in other parts of the world, they're going to have to cut costs. And cutting costs means less job security for their employees. Cutting costs means fewer contracts for the small- and medium-size businesses that are supplying goods and services to them. We live in one equal system. No business and no individual Australian operates in isolation. We do better as a team, and our team needs to be competitive in competing with other parts of the world. We are an open trading economy. We compete with countries in other parts of the world. If we make a deliberate decision to put our businesses at a competitive disadvantage by forcing them to pay higher taxes here than are faced by their competitors in other parts of the world then we are sending jobs and investment overseas. Bill Shorten used to believe this. Mr Bill Shorten actually used to believe this. He used to make that point very eloquently. (Time expired)