29-June-2010
Portfolio Media Releases, The Economy
Topics: Upcoming federal election, Labor’s weak economic team, mining tax, paid parental leave scheme
E&OE
MARIUS BENSON:
Andrew Robb the speculation is now that Australia will be voting probably by August are you ready from the Opposition’s side for an August poll, I suppose you have to be?
ANDREW ROBB:
Yes we are. We always thought that Kevin Rudd was hell-bent on going as early as he could and now with the change of jockey there’s a different reason for running early, to try and capitalise on the personality and honeymoon issue and avoid scrutiny.
MARIUS BENSON:
And with that change of jockey the Labor horse has taken a bit of a lead on you.
ANDREW ROBB:
Well you’d expect, there’s been saturation coverage, first female prime minister, you’d expect that you’d see some movement. The important thing, I think, is to allow a bit of time, so we can have then an objective assessment by people about the performance of this Labor government over the last three years and the prospect of another three years of Labor, what it will mean for the country.
MARIUS BENSON:
A general view of election campaigns is it is a time the electorate looks particularly at the opposition and considers them, and whether they’re fit to govern. The government is hammering Tony Abbott as being weak in economics, he has dismissed economics as the dismal science, that’s going to be a line of attack. You were specifically brought in to replace Barnaby Joyce, to boost the opposition’s economic standing, do you accept that is going to be a key area of attack from the government?
ANDREW ROBB:
I accept that economics is going to be the key to the election. That is the priority. On our front Tony Abbott, he’s got an economic degree, he’s been a minister in a very successful government over 11 years, Joe Hockey and myself, I’m a macro-economist with a lot of business experience.
On the other side Wayne Swan is universally regarded as a lightweight and Lindsay Tanner won’t be there.
MARIUS BENSON:
Do you agree with the point that Tony Abbott made at the weekend when he was talking about company tax and he dismissed the government’s proposal to use mining revenue to cut company tax, he said no one much is going to notice the 2 per cent cut in company tax, do you share that view?
ANDREW ROBB:
Well, I think he was taken right out of context. Tony was saying, compared with the effect of a $12 billion tax on our mining industry, Tony was saying compared with that, the 2 per cent cut in company tax does pale into insignificance.
MARIUS BENSON:
Ok, the government is promising this 2 per cent cut in company tax if the mining tax does go through to fund it. The opposition on the other hand is planning to increase company tax by nearly 2 per cent for more than 3,000 of Australia’s biggest companies, that’s to fund the paid parental leave scheme. A lot of people are saying were the opposition to win the first thing to go would be the paid parental leave scheme. Can you guarantee it will be implemented if the opposition wins?
ANDREW ROBB:
There is no doubt that the paid parental leave scheme will go ahead. Our focus on any spending in the next term of office will be on those things that increase our productivity. And the paid parental leave scheme is a productivity-related measure. It will enable us to keep many women in the workforce who are highly trained, highly skilled, and who may otherwise leave the workforce for some years because of their circumstance. So it’s a very important measure we see from a productivity point of view and I can guarantee that we will go ahead with it.
MARIUS BENSON:
So that’s an absolute guarantee the paid parental leave scheme?
ANDREW ROBB:
It is.
MARIUS BENSON:
Then the corollary of that is that it’s guaranteed that the company tax on 3,200 of our biggest companies will go up by 1.7 per cent?
ANDREW ROBB:
Well, it’s a temporary levy. You might recall in the early years …
MARIUS BENSON:
Can you say how temporary?
ANDREW ROBB:
As soon as we get the country’s finances back into some sort of shape we will look to phase that out. That is exactly what we did in the Howard Government. The Howard Government when it took over faced $96 billion worth of debt. We did put in temporary levies, three of them as I recall, in the first three or four years, which were then quickly phased out as we got on top of the massive debt and the deficit problems that were left to us by Labor last time.
MARIUS BENSON:
Andrew Robb, I’ll leave it there, thank you very much.