Kristina Keneally (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take part in this debate to take note of the answers provided by Minister Cormann to questions posed by me, Senator Sterle and Senator Collins. Many of the questions today focused on the Business Council of Australia. While Senator Duniam was so keen to hear about commitments written in stone and firmly given, he might have inquired of the Business Council of Australia, when it made a 'commitment'—and I use that in quotation marks—to the Senate were the Senate to pass the corporate tax cut: what will the Business Council of Australia do? They will—wait for it, folks—invest more. Not one job was committed to. Not one specific investment was committed to. There was not one project that they said would go ahead. They simply said, 'We will invest more.' If Senator Duniam is so concerned about the voters of Braddon and voters in his home state of Tasmania having that ironclad commitment, he should try to get a commitment out of the Business Council of Australia as to what they would do if they were given a corporate tax cut, because 'invest more' is not a commitment. It's just two words that really convey very little. They don't convey anything specific about what those companies will do.

When the BCA was asked in a Senate inquiry if it could name a country—just one country in the world—where a cut in the corporate tax rate had led to a rise in wages, do you know what it said? It said that it would have to take that on notice. The BCA has already declared itself the campaigning arm of the Turnbull government for the corporate tax cut. You would think that this campaigning arm, the Business Council of Australia, would have an answer to this very basic question: if you give a corporate tax cut, where does it lead to a wage rise? There is not one country in the world that the BCA can point to where a corporate tax cut has led to a wage rise for workers. We saw that played out again today in the answers given by Senator Cormann in question time.

What we know from the answers given by Senator Cormann in question time is that he completely rejects that there is any evidence whatsoever that shows that corporate tax rates only benefit shareholders and corporate executives. He rejects that. He says there is evidence somewhere in the world, apparently, that corporate tax cuts somehow benefit workers. But this flies in the face of the evidence that we see in the United States today. We hear over and over from this Turnbull government—from the Treasurer, the finance minister, the Prime Minister and speakers here today in this take-note debate—that Australia has to somehow cut its corporate tax rate because the United States has cut its corporate tax rate. If they want to cite the United States as an example we should follow, maybe we should look at the evidence of what is happening in the United States. What do we know of what is happening in the United States since they cut their corporate tax rate? We know that share buybacks are at a record high.

We also know that companies like Harley-Davidson, right after getting the corporate tax cut, cut their workforce. In fact, they shut down a plant and had a net loss of 350 jobs. And what did they do just days later? They transacted a share buyback of several million dollars. They had a net loss of 350 jobs, they bought back 15 million shares and they announced a dividend increase. This is what the evidence shows in the United States.

Now, I picked on Harley-Davidson because President Trump himself has held this company up as one of the gold standards—one of the great ones 'bringing the jobs back to America'. Well, they're not. The Trump administration has given a corporate tax cut. Who has benefitted? Shareholders and CEOs. Who has lost out? The working people of America. This is the example that the Turnbull government wants us to follow and these are the consequences of that action.

What we heard about today in question time was no less a person than Marco Rubio, a Republican senator—a former Republican candidate for President—who has told the truth to the American people. He has told them the truth. He said that when it comes to corporate tax cuts in the United States they have seen that the companies have bought back shares. They have seen that few have given out bonuses, and that, 'There is no evidence whatsoever that the money has been massively poured back into the American worker.' Well, if that is what's happening in America, you can only imagine what's going to happen in Australia: the same thing, because this government stands up for their mates—the big end of town. They stand up for the shareholders and they're not standing up for the working people of Australia.

Question agreed to.