Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

It is good to see that the member for O’Connor is on the job; it is very good to see. If it is taxable income it is about 3,500 companies. If it is tax being paid it is only about 900, 950 or so. There is a big difference between these possibilities. Unfortunately, the Leader of the Opposition cannot quite say when his paid parental leave would start—maybe sometime around 2013. He cannot say whether the tax impost would be permanent or temporary; he described it as a ‘temporary levy’. And he cannot say whether or not he would support the legislation the government is putting to the Senate and to this House to introduce our paid parental leave scheme. He cannot say how he would prevent abuse of the $5 million threshold or unfairness that would flow from it. How would he stop companies from restructuring to avoid the tax? How would he protect companies that are above the threshold, and hit by the tax, from competition from companies that they compete with that are below the threshold? How would he remove the implicit disincentive involved with his tax impost for companies to merge? How would he prevent the tax being passed on to consumers?

I note that the head of the Institute of Public Affairs, prominent Liberal Party figure John Roskam, said the following in response, describing his proposal as disastrous because ‘ultimately tax on businesses’—whether they are big businesses or small businesses—‘gets passed through to the consumer, and what we are going to see, as Lindsay Tanner identified, is massive compliance issues’. This is a prominent figure in the Liberal Party agreeing with me. A very prominent figure who has some political and policy substance actually agrees with my assessment and the government’s assessment of the policy merits of the scheme.

Over the last few months we have seen the Leader of the Opposition out there on the quad bike, in the speedos, in the swimming pool. No doubt we are going to see him abseiling and bungee jumping and all those other kinds of things in due course. He should start paying some attention to his day job. If he is going to put forward policy propositions that he expects the government to adopt, that involve big slugs on business and that threaten jobs and the economy, and he proposes to block the government’s own initiative, he needs to do some very serious homework. This will not cut the mustard, and it means he will be a substantial threat to the economy and to the budget, a risk to the future prosperity of this nation.

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