Mr HOGAN (Page—Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) (15:36): It's a pleasure to speak on an MPI. It's been a couple of years, so I'm looking forward to it. I'll wait for a moment too, because it's the first time I've spoken from this dispatch box. I consider it a great honour, and I acknowledge my community for giving me the opportunity. One of the phrases in the matter of public importance is 'to focus on the needs of Australians'. That is one thing I can agree with the Leader of the Opposition on—when he spoke about his address to the National Press Club and how one of the first things he would focus on was jobs. That is something we always need to look at when we are in this place, representing our communities or representing the government: what have we as representatives or what has our government done with respect to jobs? In focusing on the needs of Australians, one of the successes of this government—the government that I'm a member of—has been the job creation that has happened under us over the last six years. In that time, over 1.5 million jobs have been created. Unemployment rates have fallen, and we have a record number of people in work. Male employment is at a record high, female employment is at a record high and, very importantly, we have record-high youth employment. I think that is a very proud statistic to have as a government. Employment continues to grow at record levels. So that is fulfilling and focusing, I think, on one of if not the primary needs of Australians. I want to go through a few things about why I think we've done that. These statistics don't just happen. They happen because of the policies and the focus of the government—what the government is achieving. I represent a region that is a very high exporting area. I have beef producers, pork producers, growers of blueberries, macadamias and many other agricultural products. I think one of the proudest achievements of this government—and, compared to when Labor was in government, we've had far more achievements in this area—has been trade agreements. One of the major things that has maintained the wealth of this country over a long time is the fact that we have always been a trading nation. To give an example, one of the biggest private employers in my region is an abattoir. They employ, at any particular point in time, over a thousand people. They are standing up— Mr Perrett: How many Australians? Mr HOGAN: I'll take that interjection—virtually all of them, Member for Moreton. We have very few visa workers. The Casino community owns that meatworks. We have three generations of two families who work there, and we have very few visa or foreign workers there. They're proud of it, and so they should be. On the free trade agreements we've implemented—obviously, we had the President of Indonesia here this week, which was an historic occasion, and we've done a further trade agreement with them. What we've done as a government is get literally hundreds, if not billions, of customers for our agricultural producers. We've given them hundreds of millions of extra customers and better access to markets where they can sell their product. And that has had a real impact. The drought has been very devastating, but, behind the drought, over the last number of years, the prices for the majority of agricultural products—almost across every agricultural product—has gone up. And that, as I say, hasn't happened by mistake; it's happened because it's been a focus of ours. We've had some wonderful trade ministers, starting from Andrew Robb, since we've been in government, and it has had real results on the ground and created extra jobs and growth and prosperity, especially in regional Australia. There's another thing that's very important. I'm, again, very proud of the government and its focus on infrastructure. Almost since day one, back in 2013, we've wanted to have a focus on being an infrastructure government. Just to give you some examples—we've obviously got a $100 billion infrastructure program over the next 10 years—one of the biggest infrastructure projects in regional Australia for many years was in my patch. It was the dual duplication of the Pacific Highway between Woolgoolga and Ballina. That project alone directly employed at any particular point of time around 2,000 to 3,000 people. The flow on from that is huge—the indirect jobs that that brings when you have so many people coming to work in a program. We have, again, some really targeted infrastructure programs that are very important to regional Australia, things like the Roads to Recovery Program—that didn't always exist. The Roads to Recovery Program came from John Anderson, a previous Nationals leader, who understood that regional Australia needed more help beyond what local councils could provide. The Roads to Recovery Program, now widely accepted by both sides of parliament, was the result of a Nationals leader. The Bridges Renewal Program is a new one. I know Warren Truss, the previous member for Wide Bay, was a champion of this program. Why is that important? Take Kyogle. They have a very small rate base, but they have something like 300 timber bridges, which is an enormous piece of infrastructure to maintain for a council that would struggle to maintain those with the rate base they have. We see that. We understand that. We understand the importance of that, because the area is an important economic driver. They produce great produce around Kyogle, so we instituted that program to make sure we could help them out. I won't go through it all, but I tell you what, the Building Better Regions Fund, again, is about increasing efficiency and increasing productivity and increasing jobs in regional Australia. It has been a real focus of this government, and it doesn't just happen. It is one of the reasons that we've had the record job growth that I started with. With some of those things the opposition may well say they agree with that infrastructure. They may well agree with free trade, even though they couldn't nail many deals. I tell you one thing we do disagree on—and I think the last election highlighted where Australians sit on this—is tax. This is one of the major philosophical discussions that we have in this place and where we disagree, because we have been arguing about tax cuts in this place since we got here. We obviously, as you know, Deputy Speaker, were arguing for small business and business tax cuts, and the other side have always opposed that. I don't think they understand that we live in a competitive world, and that, if we want our small businesses and if we want our large businesses to survive and flourish, we have to match and we have to be internationally competitive. We have one of the highest tax rates for companies in the world. We did get through the tax cuts for the smaller businesses, and that was very important. Why do we understand that? We understand that because a lot of us on this side have managed a business or run a business. We understand that when you give businesses a tax cut they will put more of that money back into the business, they have more money to invest in the business and they have more money to employ people in the business. I think it's a great shame, because I actually think that up until the last parliament that Australia had really had a bit of a bipartisan approach on tax cuts. Believe you me, probably one of the glory days of the Labor Party were the Hawke-Keating years. They understood tax cuts. They were cutting company tax rates, large and small. Mr Hill: It was an offset, you idiot! The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Llew O'Brien ): The member for Bruce will withdraw. Mr HOGAN: They obviously don't understand that now, because they opposed us and fought us all the way on those tax cuts for business. They still oppose the tax cuts for large businesses, so they still don't get it. The other big distinction was the tax cuts for small— The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Lyons on a point of order? Mr Brian Mitchell: Yes. The minister is misleading the House. Labor voted for— The DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, the minister is not misleading the House. The minister will continue. Mr HOGAN: It was also the tax cuts. We went to the last election wanting to decrease people's taxes. They went to the last election wanting to increase people's taxes. That was the distinction. That was the big difference that the Australian voters saw. Again, I don't think they have heard it. They are great at coming up with ways to spend money. Labor have never had an issue with finding ways to spend money, specifically tax money. At the last election we saw that the Australian people understand how the economy works. They understand that we need to keep businesses competitive by having international competitive tax rates. They understand that, by putting more money in their hands, we are going to be a more successful economy. They reject, again, higher taxes and a bigger government that will obviously be more wasteful. I think this government over the last six or seven years, which is why we keep getting re-elected, has been definitely focused on the economy. (Time expired)