STEVE PRICE:
David Bradbury good evening to you.
DAVID BRADBURY:
Good evening Steve, how are you?
PRICE:
I'm well thanks and Andrew Bolt is with us as well.
BRADBURY:
Hi Andrew, how are you?
ANDREW BOLT:
David I am so glad I finally get to talk to a Labor Minister so thank you so much.
PRICE:
The company tax rate, the 1% drop that you've scratched from the budget, quite rightly you're getting a bit of heat over that and business over the country is pretty cranky about it.
BRADBURY:
Well look, you know politics is the art of the possible and certainly on the company tax cut, it was not possible and you can ask questions about why it wasn't possible but in the end the government was not able to secure passage through the Parliament and we know that because the opposition and the Greens had decided to block any tax cut.
PRICE:
But you hadn't tried it, you just dropped it.
BRADBURY:
Well we hadn't tried it but there is no point flogging a dead horse and it was pretty clear that this was dead...
PRICE:
I think it was the 2nd of May in 2010, Wayne Swan stood up there and announced the resource super profits tax and he said he would share the benefits, this is the quote, of the mining boom by among other things funding company tax cuts from July 1 2012.
BRADBURY:
Yep and like I said there is no point flogging a dead horse. Tony Abbott at point blank range, he took this one out. So we decided that we are committed to spreading the benefits of the mining boom and the best way for us to do that was to make sure that we in first instance delivered some tax reform measures, and let's not forget that the other measures that support business, they've already gone through the Parliament...
PRICE:
Tony Abbott said he'd never support a carbon tax either, you went ahead with that.
BRADBURY:
Because we were able to secure passage through the Parliament, that's exactly right...
BOLT:
David what I don't understand, I accept some of that argument although you could have done a deal with the Greens and got a small tax cut for small business...
BRADBURY:
The Greens have never purported to be the party of business party.
BOLT:
That doesn't matter, they promised to deliver half your tax you could've gone with them.
BRADBURY:
Andrew that does matter. Look at the end of the day, Tony Abbott for all of the huff and puff...
BOLT:
I'm talking about the Greens, I'm just saying, the subject is the Greens, the Greens said we'll stop the bit that goes to big business but we'll allow the cut for small business.
BRADBURY:
And in fact they were proposing other measures to have a differentiated rate and the government decided that that was not appropriate...
BOLT:
So you're pretty cross with the Greens too, I guess.
BRADBURY:
We're not pleased; we wanted to get this through. Can I say that our determination to cut company tax has not abated and that is why we've got the Business Tax Working Group that we're working through to try and make sure we're able to fund some tax cuts for business...
BOLT:
But did you think, right, you've got this big whack of money saved by cancelling the business tax cut, did you think we've got to look after the engine drivers, the wealth creators the people that are actually generating the wealth that gives us the pension money and all that, let's steer it to business in another form, why give it away in hand outs instead?
BRADBURY:
And we did with the loss carry back measure...
BOLT:
No but that only kicks in for another year and a bit before that does.
BRADBURY:
No that is funded out of that revenue but can I make this point Andrew, okay legitimate question, why don't you ask Tony Abbott? Tony Abbott was prepared to block the revenue. He doesn't support the tax, we understand that and it would've been economically responsible to say I'm not going to raise the tax, so I won't spend it. But now he's saying I won't support the tax, but he is now supporting the expenditure measures. How is that, by any stretch of the imagination, an economically responsible thing to do?
PRICE:
The first question we'll ask him when we get him on next. The other thing you dropped of course, you announced in the 2010 budget that you'd be able to claim back a 50% tax cut on your earned interest in 2011, that was then pushed back to this year, now that's gone as well.
BRADBURY:
And look, there were some tough measures in this budget and we said that there would be. On the one hand we're out there, we've been subjected to the criticism that you need to get the budget into surplus, and we've committed to doing that, we've handed down a budget that does that but we've been saying for some time that this will take some really tough decisions. That is one I consider to be a tough decision.
PRICE:
It must make it really hard for you in your seat when you've got so many small businesses and Andrew makes the point about small business tax cuts, what do they say when they come up to you in the street, you've promised this and now you've broken your promise?
BRADBURY:
A couple of points to make there. A very large proportion of small businesses are not companies anyway and this is the point the opposition kept making. But it's true, most small businesses are actually not incorporated. They get the benefit of many of the other measures we've put in place, take for example the instant asset write off. This is providing a huge benefit to small business, allowing them to write off an asset in the first year rather than get deductions over the life of the asset. For a tradie that goes and purchases a ute he'll be able to claim the first $5,000 in a one off deduction. This is going to be a real boost to people. In addition to that, let's not forget, and Peter Strong the head of CoSBoA he always makes this point, small business people in the end, are people. These are the people who have also had the benefit of the income tax cuts that we've delivered. $47bn since we came to office...
BOLT:
Yeah but we're about trying to get small business to employ people. But David I'll give you a free kick, I'll give you a free kick, you're mainly because I presume we've just heard Tony Abbott's speech in-reply to the budget. What did you make of it?
BRADBURY:
Well I'm still none the wiser in terms of what measures in our budget he supports or opposes. I still have no idea how he intends to fill the $70bn crater that he has created and if you listened to Andrew Robb yesterday, they're not only going to create a surplus, to make a surplus a legitimate one it has to be $15bn, so that's an $85bn black hole...
BOLT:
Yeah but you were never going to get until closer to the election a shopping cut of where the cuts will be, I was really struck by the ‘my wife Margie and I' and my grandparents were...
PRICE:
Well that was in response to the class warfare part.
BOLT:
Yeah exactly and the defence that the class war argument, how comfortable are you about this class war attack that Wayne Swan and Julia Gillard have mustered because when I worked for Labor on two election campaigns, the slogan that we had was ‘bringing Australians together'. Does it make sense that we put them at each other's throat?
BRADBURY:
Look I think in part the nature around spreading the benefits of the mining and resources boom is one that can be divisive to an extent; it's the nature of what's going on here...
BOLT:
Yeah but like the attack that you're from the north suburbs or north shore...
PRICE:
And that you're not a real working family.
BRADBURY:
I'm a Western Sydney boy from way back and Sydney is a very tribal place. When I heard this morning that somebody said that the Prime Minister should issue a national apology to the people of the north shore I thought, come on give me a break...
BOLT:
But are you comfortable with that, speaking as bloke are you comfortable with ‘oh that north shore this and you poor workers' is that how you really carry on? I don't believe that.
BRADBURY:
Look what I think the Prime Minister was trying to convey...
PRICE:
David there are strugglers on the north shore...
BOLT:
I just want to hear the answer, hang on.
BRADBURY:
I'm entirely comfortable with the proposition that in this budget we are delivering assistance to people on low and middle incomes who need that assistance...
BOLT:
I'm trying to get an answer to the question which is, are you happy with playing up this rich, poor, north shore, western suburb, rich miners, poor workers I mean the great Prime Ministers have brought Australia together, Bob Hawke, John Howard, Robert Menzies, I don't know that this divisive thing works.
BRADBURY:
You took one comment there and used that for a series of characterisations and I don't accept *inaudible*...
BOLT:
I used four, I used four...
BRADBURY:
Let's have a look at what we've done...
BOLT:
Forget that, I don't want a list of policy initiatives I'm talking about the rhetoric. The rhetoric is very clear that the north shore attacks, there were two I think from Julia Gillard, she pushed them again today, the attacks on the miners have been absolutely constant, the plugging of the budget is a rich versus poor thing. It's there, it's an obvious strategy.
BRADBURY:
We can have a rhetorical debate about the rhetoric, or we can talk about the policy...
BOLT:
Yeah but you've chosen the rhetoric, I'm responding to it.
BRADBURY:
In the end, well tonight's speech might have had a touch of rhetoric in it too, in fact it didn't have much else. But the point that I would make, is that in the end people get in to the business of politics to change the lives of people, and I believe we're a government that is doing that and we're doing that through the prism of what I see to be traditional Labor values. That's not about knocking people because they're successful, but it is also about ensuring that people don't get left behind...
BOLT:
David I love that pitch, that pitch is a good pitch, what you've just said and how you've said it is really good but what I'm hearing from Labor now this really strident hate the rich and north shore and all that is not Labor Party that I worked for back in the 1980s where the slogan was ‘Bringing Australians Together'. You've gone for a different approach and I'm wondering is that smart politics, what are you doing here, what's the point?
BRADBURY:
Andrew, presumably you're paid good money to commentate on these matters so I'll leave them too you...
PRICE:
We're not going to get an answer obviously.
BRADBURY:
My view is that the Prime Minister was out there selling a good budget, a budget that returns us to surplus and one that I think genuinely is in the spirit of our Labor values.
PRICE:
I hear what you're saying David, we've got to go but I appreciate you sticking your message, but more than that Andrew and I appreciate you jumping on the phone and talking to us, thanks a lot.
BRADBURY:
Okay thanks very much.