Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I am reminded of that commercial with Pro Hart where he made an enormous mess on the carpet and the cleaner who came into the room and saw this enormous mess said, ‘Oh, Mr Hart, what a mess!’ Mr Hart thought it was art and many people would think it was art. The one thing that is different between that analogy and what we see with the government is that, when they do all these things, they think they have created a great artwork in government. But what we know, time and time again, is that once they have come to office and splashed the paint around and rolled around on the carpet with government money the Australian public will turn up and walk in and say to this Prime Minister, ‘Oh, Mr Rudd, what a mess!’ And it will be up to the coalition once again to turn up and continue the story of Australian politics, which is that every time Labor get in they create such a fiscal mess that the Australian public turn to the coalition and say, ‘It is time for you to clean up their mess again.’

This issue is a very big deal. Between 600,000 and one million employees participate in these schemes. My own electorate of Cook has the highest employment of Qantas employees, and Qantas offers 34,000 employees these types of schemes. Of the top 500 listed companies, 450 offer these types of schemes, and for small business it is an important tool to facilitate transition and succession arrangements and to transfer ownership to employees, which is not something this government has an enthusiasm for.

What we have seen with this measure is the same as we have seen with many measures in this budget. The approach here is purely ideological. They simply do not understand this issue—they do not get this issue—and they are not passionate about it. It is not something that they want to see encouraged in the Australian workplace. They highlight, through the budget, this political doctrine of attacking those they simply do not like and do not want to encourage. They attach to them all of these pernicious phrases. They call the doctors who want to help people with fertility treatment ‘overcharging doctors’ and they engage in doctor bashing. Here they describe the people who want to engage in share ownership schemes as tax burglars, which we just heard the Assistant Treasurer say in this place. He said the people who want to engage in these things are tax burglars. They apply these pernicious terms to them to try to impugn their motive as some sort of unholy one and to try to justify their ideological war and their lack of enthusiasm for things that actually make a difference in the workplace.

The requirement to pay, as the shadow minister at the dispatch box clearly said, the tax upfront is without question a discouragement. It is a disincentive to the establishment and take-up of these schemes. I believe the government knows this. They know that by putting in these measures the take-up of these schemes will be discouraged. As Rahm Emanuel said and as the member for Higgins said in his speech the other night, ‘Never waste a crisis.’ That is what we have seen from this government all the way through this economic crisis. It has been an opportunity for them to repackage social agendas and social spending agendas as economic stimuluses. That is what we are seeing with their rather unholy approach to this issue.

We simply need to look no further than the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy. Back in 2000 they were part of a House of Representatives inquiry into these types of schemes. They signed themselves up to a report which said that there is no clear and objective evidence for the claimed productivity pay-off from such schemes. The Assistant Treasurer said before that there are some people in the government who support these types of things. Clearly not the Deputy Prime Minister. Clearly not the minister for small business. They do not believe it. They simply do not buy it. They are not interested in supporting it. That is what we see in these measures here before us.

It is another step in Labor’s attempt to reregulate our economy. They are looking to reregulate our economy. This poses an enormous threat to the recovery of the Australian economy when it comes out of recession, which will hopefully be sooner rather than later, but that is hard to believe under this government. Labor’s forecasts, as put out both in their budget papers and in the plethora of other information they have been talking about which are not in the budget papers, are putting forward a scenario of miracle growth to get us out of debt and deficit. But even their early-year forecasts rely critically on comparisons between the current economic situation and situations in the early 1990s and the early 1980s to justify the growth forecasts they have in their budget papers.

It was also noted the other night—and I made this point myself in my own budget reply speech—that it is quite clear that the recession in the early 1990s was far worse, at least on the forecast provided by this government, than the recession we are going through here. The government likes to talk about the global recession when it is talking about these measures, but when it comes to talking about the Australian recession it is a lot more quiet. I quote the member for Higgins from the other night:

… we are told this is the greatest downturn since the Great Depression and yet, on the other hand, the budget forecasts a contraction of half a per cent of GDP. In the year to June 1983, in that recession, there was a contraction of 3.4 per cent. In the recession to June 1991, there was a contraction of 1.5 per cent, so the government is in fact forecasting a much milder recession than 1991 or 1983.

He went on to say—and this is absolutely true:

The only thing that will be greater coming out of this recession is the budget deficit, because in neither of those recessions did the budget deficit ever blow out to five per cent of GDP.

The other thing I would say is this. As we seek to climb out of this recession the other thing that was different in the nineties and in the eighties was that at least the economy was trying to grow into an open field, or at least a more open field. We had a situation where there had been economic reforms that had been put in place prior to that, economic reforms which shadowed in comparison to those introduced by the Howard government, but at least our economy was trying to grow into a more liberally regulated economy. What we are seeing under this government is a tightening. What we are seeing from this government is a reregulation, whether it is in the labour market, the financial markets, here in terms of employee arrangements or any of these things. What we are seeing is that this government wants to take forecasts from the early 1990s and the early 1980s, and it wants to bind up the economy. It is going to bind it up with its proposed CPRS, the emissions trading scheme. They will not tell us what the impact of that scheme will be on their growth forecasts. They will not tell us what the impact of that will be on the debt and their ability to repay the debt. They are saying they want us to regrow in a more regulated, tightened, structured economy which does not allow for things like employee share ownership schemes, where people cannot invest in the productivity of their business and seek to gain the advantage of putting in the sweat equity as employees and have the opportunity to share in the prosperity that comes from that. This is something this government simply does not believe in. So our economy will have to try and grow again in the bog that this government is creating with the policies that it is putting on our economy as we speak, and this is a classic measure.

This is a rushed and bungled measure. We have seen plenty of rushed and bungled measures from this government, such as the unlimited bank guarantee which froze the savings of 270,000 Australians and tied up liquidity all around the country. It took ages for the government to come to terms with this. Here is yet another rushed and bungled attempt. Here also in this place we on this side of the House are having this imposition: ‘Just sign up to the CPRS. We know you understand that this is a deeply flawed scheme that will put massive costs on the Australian economy and export emissions and export jobs, but sign up to it. We want this thing there so the Prime Minister can sign his application form to be Secretary-General of the UN by taking his pretty little CPRS to his meeting in Copenhagen.’ So he is going to try and rush and bungle that through, and this is another measure which shows they have rushed and bungled.

This is not a government that has got too many things right. They do not get too many things right. Maybe that is why they cannot get support on too many things. If they took the time to get a few more things right then maybe we would be able to support a few more things. But on this occasion they have shown once again that when they do just throw it out there they get it hopelessly wrong. The shadow Assistant Treasurer said quite clearly, ‘This situation is like saying there are termites in the house and so the answer is to knock it down.’ Their answer now is given after you have got home and found they have knocked down your house. Then they say: ‘Would you like to talk about it? Would you like to talk about the fact that we have knocked your house down? Is there anything you’d like to share about how we can improve?’ Maybe not knocking our house down in the first place would have been a good move. This is a rushed and bungled measure. This is an unfair measure and it is a desperate measure from a government addicted to debt. (Time expired)

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