James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have a confession to make: I am a neoliberal. I don't have the handbook; it's just something I learnt with my parents: to believe in freedom, to believe in cutting taxes and to believe in free trade. But, if there is a handbook, I would love the Greens to be able to perhaps use their communications allowance to buy copies of this neoliberal handbook, read through it themselves and understand that free trade and cutting taxes are good for Australia and good for people. If you want to get people out of poverty, if you want to diminish inequality in society, the best thing to do is give people a job. And how do people get a job? They get a job through business. Governments don't create jobs; they create the environment for business to employ people. And this government, more than any government in the history of Australia, since our election in 2013 has created jobs—over one million jobs for people who have been employed by big, medium and small businesses. If you want business to grow, if you want Australia to grow and if you want to have a strong social safety net for Australia then you must have a strong business community.

For the Greens to come in here and talk about the welfare of Australian workers and the welfare of Australians is absolute hypocrisy, because the greatest threat to the Australian economy and our ability to look after those who need help comes from those on the Left, those who want to tax more and those who want to stop free trade agreements. We've got the Greens, with their support for crippling renewable energy targets that have helped push up the price of electricity in this country and brutalise businesses. If can ask a member of the Greens, 'What is the greatest impost upon businesses in Australia today?' they will say, 'The price of electricity,' and then they'll say, 'Taxes.' This government is cutting taxes and dealing with the price of electricity in Australia.

I want to focus on tax cuts, because I think that tax cuts are good. I think that tax cuts are brilliant. The more taxes we can cut, the happier everybody in Australia will be. The more free trade agreements we can have, the happier everybody in Australia will be. The sad thing is that tax cuts and free trade agreements—two quite simple concepts—are concepts that both the Labor Party and the Greens have trouble understanding. How many free trade agreements were enacted while Labor were last in power, between 2007 and 2013? It's pretty simple, for those listening at home, sitting on your tractor or on the back verandah having a cheeky cup of tea: zero free trade agreements. It's this government, since 2013, that has been pushing strongly for free trade agreements.

Let's just focus on tax cuts. Let's just focus on our long-term economic plan to cut taxes for Australian businesses. Why do we want to do that? It's for those who run those small and medium businesses, those mums and dads, those people who want to give it a go and those people who see that empty shop in a shopping centre or on the main street—where my office is in Nambour it's Currie Street—and say: 'I want to start a business there. I have a dream to start a business there, just like so many other people have done.' Every medium business and every large business in Australia started off with someone's dream: someone looking at an empty shop space, someone starting off in their garage and someone in their lounge room or at their dining room table late at night working out how to get people to pay their bills, sending out invoices. What we want to do for those aspirational people who want to get ahead is cut their taxes. That is a good thing.

I note, for those listening at home, that none of the Greens are here. There is an empty space over there. It's the most intelligent those benches have looked for a long time, with no Greens sitting there. It's a pity. I hope they're watching on the TVs in their offices and learning why the mum-and-dad businesses—or the mum businesses or dad businesses; whatever it is; I don't care—want tax cuts. Why do they want tax cuts? It's so that they can reinvest back into their businesses, so they can grow their businesses and so they can employ more staff. Do you know where the staff come from? They come from other businesses, school leavers, people leaving university or people who have been out of work, who've been unemployed, which is why this government has facilitated the conditions for businesses to employ over one million Australians since 2013. That's an additional one million Australians.

If a business makes half a million dollars in turnover, it will have an additional $7,500 in 2021 or $12,000 in 2021-22. That will be invested back into businesses and back into employing more people. That is good for Australia. If people have jobs, they are better off. This Greens motion is about inequality and getting people out of poverty. The best way to get anyone out of poverty—or to diminish inequality where it exists—is to have them get a job, because once they get a job they're earning money. They then understand the importance of money and they understand how they can start a business themselves. They can see how their bosses operate and go, 'I want to start my own business.'

What we want to do through our neoliberal agenda—this scary neoliberal agenda that those on the left talk about like it's the bogeyman but don't really understand—is make it easier for people to get on with their lives without a heavy-handed government coming in, bossing people around and telling them what to do. We think, if you have tax cuts, you know what's best to do with your own money. Whether you're a PAYE taxpayer, a small-business person or a medium-business person, the money you get back is actually your money. It's not the government's money and it's not the politicians' money; it's your money.

This is one of the fallacies of this argument in Australia when people talk about giving money to business or to PAYE taxpayers. It's not giving money. It's their money. It's their money that they give to the government to fund services. And what we say on our side of politics is that government is at its best when it's small—to enable people to get on with their lives, to get on with making those decisions without government bossing them around. We've finished seven free trade agreements since 2013. That's pretty good. Compare that to Labor. Between 2007 and 2013, they didn't do anything. They were asleep at the wheel. When Labor and the Greens were in power, they were having a good old doze at the wheel when it came to free trade agreements. That is because we understand that, if Australia is to grow and if our economy is to grow, we cannot just trade amongst ourselves. That is a false economic argument. We've got to get out there and sell our goods and our services to the world. And the best way to do that is through free trade agreements.

Five years ago, only 26 per cent of our goods and services received duty-free or preferential access to overseas markets. After completing a range of negotiations, we have now signed agreements with countries that account for nearly 70 per cent of our trade, with current negotiations potentially taking that figure up to 88 per cent. So we're going to keep working hard for those farmers and those businesses to make sure that we get the conclusion of more free trade agreements. Why is this important? Because each new overseas market opportunity we open up for Australian businesses is a chance to grow. That is good for Australian families and workers and good for the economy.

In 2017-18, we achieved record exports of $401 billion and our global trade surplus was $6.3 billion. We know that Australian businesses that export pay their employees, on average, 11.5 per cent more than businesses that do not export. And household incomes are estimated to be $8,448 higher due to the trade liberalisation taken in Australia since the 1980s. For example, our agreement with the United States has served us well by enabling cheaper inputs to be imported into Australia to feed our high export growth to countries like China, Japan and Korea. This free trade agreement, recognised by the United States as a model free trade agreement, allows the Liberal-National government to secure the only country exemption from recent US tariffs on steel and aluminium.

Let's talk about the TPP-11, those five letters that send the left into spasms. They're so scared about this. This will eliminate more than 98 per cent of tariffs for 11 countries with a combined GDP of $13.8 trillion and close to 500 million consumers. Australian farmers, manufacturers, service providers, small businesses and exporters and small businesses are all winners from the TPP-11 because it will be easier to sell their goods and supply services to a free trade area that spans America and Asia.