Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

What the Senate has just heard is more unmitigated nonsense from Senator Cameron. In fact, Senator Cameron's one true statement in this parliament in all of his time here was when he rightly accused his fellow colleagues in the ALP caucus of being lobotomised zombies. Remember that? Senator Cameron was saying that nobody discusses anything in the Labor Party caucus. He said that they were all lobotomised zombies; they took whatever the then ministers said as true.

Senator Cameron, I often confess to this parliament that I'm not terribly bright, but I can work out the enterprise tax plan. Senator Cameron perhaps hasn't caught up with this yet, but many international competitors, including Canada, Singapore, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Norway, Israel, Japan and France, have reduced their company taxes. The US slashed business tax from 35 per cent to 21 per cent. If the Australian rate remains stranded at 30 per cent, Australia will have one of the highest tax rates in the OECD, making it harder for Australian companies to compete in a fiercely competitive global market. International investors will take their capital and the resultant jobs to countries where it is cheaper to do business.

What the ALP and the lobotomised zombies on the other side want to do is create jobs in the United States, in Norway, in Israel, in France and in the United Kingdom. As I say, you don't have to be terribly clever to work this out. If a company has $100 million to spend on building a factory to make widgets and is going to make $10 million profit as a result of it, and when it looks around can see that it's going to pay 30 per cent tax in Australia on its profit but only 21 per cent in the United States and less in other countries—they can build the same factory, they can make the same widgets and they would make the same profit, but they'd pay more tax in Australia—where is this international investor going to go? Clearly, not to Australia. Clearly, they will go to a country where it is cheaper to make the widgets and get the same profit, because they will pay less tax and more money to their shareholders.

The ALP policy is all about transferring Australian jobs to overseas countries. I don't understand why the ALP doesn't work this out now. Mr Shorten used to understand that, because it was only a few short years ago that Mr Shorten was advocating for lower corporate taxes for this very reason. He then understood that you can't compete in a very tight international market where you are charging international investors more than your competitors, and so Mr Shorten was very vocal in those days in promoting this. In fact, that was about the time, as I recall, that Senator Cameron made his famous description of his colleagues in the ALP caucus as being lobotomised zombies. I assume that, when Mr Shorten was advocating for lower corporate taxes, that the lobotomised zombies—Senator Cameron's term—simply sat there dumbfounded and agreed with Mr Shorten.

Mr Shorten thinks he can fool the Australian public with this politics of envy and with this, 'We'll give you everything you ask' approach that he's currently adopted. He thinks that that might win him a few votes at an election, but most Australians are not fools. They can see right through Mr Shorten and the fact that a few years ago he thought it was a good idea. The lobotomised zombies agreed with him a few years ago but now, because they think they see a political advantage, they've changed their approach. It won't work. The Australian people are not that stupid.