Mr HOGAN (Page) (16:00): The dialogue we are getting from the opposition benches these days compared to what has happened in this country for the last 30 years means we have never had a more separate and stark choice between government and opposition for 30 years. For 30 years, both sides of politics, whether Labor were in government or out of government or whether we were in government or out of government, had a few core beliefs about what was good for the economy. The Leader of the Opposition today gave his MPI, which had things like the NDIS and all that stuff written in it, but all he spoke about for over half of it was corporate tax cuts. For nearly the whole time, he focused on corporate tax cuts. I will give a history lesson to the opposition benches. The two Labor people, or the two prime ministers, who began corporate tax cuts were Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. Bob Hawke and Paul Keating understood, as did the Howard government, that they wanted to provide better government services. Hawke and Keating wanted to provide better government services, and so did the Howard government, and both governments understood that doing that would grow the economy. We have had almost 20 years of uninterrupted growth, parallel with lowering company tax rates, lowering personal income tax rates, lowering tariffs and getting our economy to be more open and international. Unfortunately, that has now changed. This Labor opposition has shown that they want to go back. We are not the government of the fifties and sixties; they are. They want to go back to tax and spend. You want to do something? You want to spend some money? Go and tax someone. Well, if you do that, then put them back to 80 or 90; put them back to 60 and 70. And do you know what will happen? We will lose jobs and we will shrink our economy like you have never seen before. I want to read something from the Financial Review this week, from the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It says it has examined tax revenue data collated by the Australian Bureau of Statistics—so I hope we all still have faith in the ABS. Dr Leigh interjecting— Mr HOGAN: I have read some of your books, and I know what you think about corporate tax rates, the member for Fenner. As they said, they thought you were from the AWU, not the ANU. So the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry says it has examined tax revenue data collated by the Australian Bureau of Statistics over the past three cuts in the corporate tax rate, undertaken—listen to this—by both Labor and the coalition government. I have given them that history lesson, as they may have forgotten. It says that, in each case, the revenue collected from company tax has increased within two years. Dr Leigh interjecting— The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Coulton ): The member for Fenner will sit silently! Mr HOGAN: Furthermore, it says that, as the rate of company tax has fallen—get this: this is important too; I would love the academic to get this bit—the proportion of company tax as a share of total government revenue has risen. Who would have thought? I would have thought that, hopefully, an academic would have got that. Revenue from company tax rose from $8.6 billion in 1987-1988—and, just for the history lesson, you were in government then—to $12.7 billion in 1988-1990 after a 10-point cut in the rate, while the company tax as a share of government revenue rose from 11.4 per cent to a 14 per cent increase. That is what we are talking about. It would be lovely, if we lived in a closed world. If we lived in a closed world, we could do and tax what we like. But we live in a very open and global trading economy and, whether we like it or not, we have to be competitive. We also have to be competitive in company tax rates. But, to go on, revenue rose from $26 billion in 1999-2000 to $35 billion in 2002-2003—again after a one percentage point as a share of revenue after the coalition cut the tax rate from 36 to 30 per cent. That is what history tells us. We have other international history lessons. Ireland—Ireland cut its tax rate. Ireland was going broke in the eighties. They had a corporate tax rate of 60 per cent, which they lowered to 10 per cent, and, within three years, they were collecting more at 10 than at 60 per cent. But that has been a standard belief of both sides of politics for 25 years. We are— (Time expired)