Senate must put jobs and the national interest first

Few Australians under 40 would appreciate the productive relationships between business and the governments of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating decades ago, and the long-term economic benefits that ensued. Opposition frontbencher Anthony Albanese is from Labor’s left, which usually favours big taxes and big government. But his call for the party to engage constructively with business has shamed Bill Shorten’s anti-business and class warfare crusades. Malcolm Turnbull was right yesterday when he said the Opposition Leader had abandoned “years of what the Labor Party used to stand for … people getting ahead, backing families, aspiration … Now they say aspiration is a mystery and they want to wage a campaign on aspiration, on investment, on jobs.”

Such issues are at the heart of the personal income tax package passed last week and to the last stage of the government’s corporate tax cuts, to be voted on this week. Crossbenchers should consider the question the Prime Minister asked yesterday: does Australia want the second biggest business taxes in the OECD? Reform has become more important since the US cut its business tax rate from 35 per cent to 21 per cent and France legislated to cut its from 33 per cent to 25 per cent. Apart from France, Australia and Mexico, on 30 per cent apiece, ranked second in the OECD in April, behind Portugal on 31.5 per cent, for the highest business taxes.

Opposition finance spokesman Jim Chalmers said yesterday that the Turnbull government’s tax cuts for companies with turnovers above $50 million would not grow the economy and that they would come at the expense of middle Australia. But as crossbench senators make up their minds, they should consider Finance Minister Mathias Cormann’s advice that, in blocking the cuts, Mr Shorten is “standing up for the big end of town in the US and the big end of town in just about every other country around the world that imposes lower business taxes on their businesses, helping those businesses take business investment and jobs away from Australia”. Businesses employing millions of workers need the capacity to compete.

Mainly out of erroneous political thinking, Mr Shorten scored an own-goal last week when the opposition, reportedly against the better judgment of some frontbenchers, voted against the government’s personal tax cuts.

The crossbenchers would be foolish to make the same mistake over the corporate tax cuts, especially with Newspoll showing voters have warmed to the idea. Ministers such as Senator Cormann have repeated the argument clearly and consistently, providing the economic narrative the nation needed to hear. Last month, Newspoll showed more Labor and Greens voters supported, rather than opposed, the company tax cuts while 60 per cent of One Nation voters backed them. This is the crossbenchers’ chance to show they have economic mettle and are not to be written off as a menagerie of misfits.

In welcoming Mr Albanese’s speech, Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox noted that some in the labour movement, as opposed to the Labor Party, are on a “divisive path”. That critique, in The Australian’s view, fits the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union and ACTU secretary Sally McManus. Despite union membership falling off the cliff, Ms McManus and the militant CFMMEU are exerting inordinate influence on and under Mr Shorten. As Mr Albanese said in his Whitlam oration, “This is not 1950, when most Australians were members of trade unions.” Labor and crossbenchers weighing up corporate tax cuts have much to learn from the Gillard government minister who advocated cutting company taxes to “keep all sectors of our economy competitive in their own global markets” and because “corporate tax reform helps Australia’s private sector grow and it creates jobs right up and down the income ladder”. Before regressing from his more sensible days, that minister was Mr Shorten.