James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to rise to contribute to this matter of public importance debate this afternoon regarding the Turnbull government. Before I turn to the substantive issues in the debate, I just have one technical correction that I feel compelled to make, and that is that the Liberal Party does not have a caucus. It's not a mistake that only you make, Senator Polley; it's a mistake that many people in the media made. I have a rule of thumb that if you ever read an article from a journalist talking about what's happening in the Liberal Party caucus then they probably don't know what they're talking about, since we don't have a caucus. Senator Polley, for your future reference the Liberal Party has a party room. I think it is an important distinction. I know that you have a caucus.

Turning to the more substantive issue before the chamber this afternoon, I'm very proud to talk about the impressive legislative agenda and achievements of the Turnbull government. I particularly want to focus on the achievements of the government in the economic sphere, because, I think, they've been particularly significant, and because I know that they are of the most interest and the most importance to my constituents in Victoria. It is our economic performance and the results of the economic agenda that we've had here in the parliament that they care most about in terms of employment in particular.

One of the recent and most significant achievements of the Turnbull government is legislating quite significant personal income tax reform. This year, in fact, the Turnbull government has passed personal income tax reforms, which ensure that all working Australians are better off. Taxes in this country, as a result of this legislative change successfully passing the parliament, will now be lower, fairer and simpler. It is the biggest and most significant tax reform package since the Howard government. It provides tax relief to more than 10 million taxpayers, with 4.4 million Australians receiving the full $530 of benefit of the new low- and middle-income tax offset.

It also, really importantly, protects Australians from bracket creep. Bracket creep is a problem which has been a subject of much commentary in the media and even occasionally by those opposite. And, yet, they quibbled when our tax package effectively abolished the concept of bracket creep for low- and middle-income earners. What the package did is it took the $87,000 tax threshold to $90,000 in 2018-19—that is this financial year—and then to $120,000 in 2022-23. That tax relief provided, under the offset in step one, will also be locked in permanently from 2022-23 by taking the $37,000 tax threshold to $41,000 and lifting the low-income tax offset to $645. Effectively, what has happened here is an entire tax bracket has been abolished and removed. It ensures that 94 per cent of Australian workers will not face a higher marginal tax rate of more than 32½c in the dollar. This is a really important reform, because, as we know, bracket creep is one of the things that discourages people from taking on more work, it discourages people from taking risks and it makes our tax system needlessly complex and inefficient. For most workers, for most of their working lives, they will just face one simple, new, lower rate of tax than they did before. That is this government acting on a complaint often raised, including by those opposite, and addressing it.

We know that the Labor Party fought tooth and nail to stop the Australian people getting this important income tax relief. It's clear that if they are successful at the next election they will reverse much, if not all, of this tax relief for working Australians—meaning higher taxes for Australian workers and meaning a smaller pay packet every fortnight. Combined with the Labor Party's other $200 billion in higher taxes they've already announced, they're now seeking to impose around $300 billion in higher taxes on the Australian economy over the next decade. It doesn't require a PhD in economics to forecast what impact that will have on people's lives and the economy.

The government's also been successful in legislating the first stage of its enterprise tax plan, and that's something that I welcome very much. I know the small and medium-sized businesses who are the beneficiaries of it in my home state of Victoria also really welcome it. Australian businesses with a turnover of up to $50 million will now pay a lower rate of tax thanks to the Turnbull government, dropping to a rate of 25 per cent by 2026-27. That's around three million Australian businesses, and those businesses employ around seven million Australian workers. That is millions of people who will benefit from companies that are more competitive, more efficient and more able to attract investment from abroad. All of these companies, as we know, will face a higher rate of tax if the Labor Party is elected. It plans to increase the rate of tax remarkably on small businesses in this country. The government is committed to extending these tax cuts to all Australian businesses, and I hope that the Senate looks very favourably on that when we consider that question later today.

The government's also had a very comprehensive free trade agreement agenda, which works in tandem with the corporate and personal income tax cuts that we've delivered. We know that, since the coalition government was elected in 2013, we've completed and signed free trade agreements with virtually all of Australia's major trading partners that we didn't already have trade agreements with, and, for any trading partners that we don't already have agreements with, they are under negotiation, including the United Kingdom, the European Union and Indonesia. Those already enforced, negotiated and signed under this coalition government are, of course, the Korea-Australia Free Trade Agreement, the Japan-Australia Economic Partnership Agreement, the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership—something that the Labor Party told us not to bother with and to give up on; luckily, the trade minister, Steve Ciobo, did not take their advice and persisted with that—the Peru-Australia Free Trade Agreement, and the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations. That means more export opportunities for Australian businesses and farmers, it means a cheaper cost of goods for Australian businesses that need to import inputs, and it means consumers have more choice and lower prices for the things that they need to buy.

Those are the inputs. 'What are the outputs?' would be a fair question to ask. Very clearly, the major output of this is the record jobs growth numbers under the Turnbull government, something that this government is very proud of because it's something that changes people's lives for the better. Going from not having a job to having a job is one of the most profound improvements someone can go through in their life, and there are a million people that can say they did that under the coalition. That's a pretty amazing statistic—1,086,806, to be precise, in less than five years since the coalition came to office. Since September 2015, 770,000 new jobs have been created, and more than half of those, 410,900, were full time. In the past 12 months, 339,018 new jobs have been created. The jobs growth over the past 12 months, of 2.7 per cent, massively outstrips the growth under the former Labor government, of 0.8 per cent.

So the Turnbull government has a very comprehensive economic agenda. It has successfully negotiated it through the parliament, despite the difficulties that this chamber occasionally poses to governments seeking to legislate, and that successful agenda is leading to real change for real Australians in their lives. Their lives are better because of the successful economic agenda prosecuted by this government.