Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was listening quite politely to the member for Petrie and towards the end of her speech I came to the conclusion that she should have taken those two or three days off from this place and done the NAPLAN test and then she might have learnt how arithmetic works. She stood up here and put forward a huge list of things that this government and this budget propose to deliver. But how will they deliver them? By increasing the tax burden on Australia at every level to pay for it.

Anybody who can get away with that sort of tax trick and that dodgy policy position can balance a budget—if they are prepared to rip enough money out of the community. Every cent of the government’s resource rent tax on mining will be taken off individual Australians through reduced dividends flowing to their superannuation funds, which the member for Petrie said is something the government are going to gift the community. No, they are going to tax the very source of national wealth and they are going to say to 480,000 retail shareholders in BHP here in Australia, ‘Having trashed the value of your shares, we’re going to make a gift of a slightly improved superannuation arrangement.’

I heard the Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law quoting dodgy figures yesterday. I drew to his attention that when you quote statistics in the parliament it is not a bad idea to quote them all and that the suggestion that the recent crash in the value of mining stocks was to do with later announcements regarding the Greek and EU economies just does not stand up to the simple arithmetic of looking at the dates when each occurred. The mining stocks crashed and a week later or thereabouts there was a more demeaning situation with a steady correction across the entire stock market because of a simple fact: the Europeans have discovered that the type of activity undertaken in this place, stimulus by government, has a downside. We saw governments rush into the borrowing market and borrow a heap of money to prop up dodgy financial institutions in the Northern Hemisphere. But surprise, surprise, in Europe they now do not have enough money to pay their own debts and the financial sector is panicking because it thought it was rock-solid to lend to government. Yes, it is probable this government can repay its debts, but, of course, it was borrowing from a position of no debt. Those circumstances are extremely obvious in this budget.

The member for Petrie said, ‘You’re going to stop kids getting their computers.’ On a very friendly occasion last week, the Speaker of the House, Harry Jenkins, and I visited some schools in my electorate. It was a great day; we went there to talk about what the Speaker does and educate kids on the workings of the parliament. But when it came to the question and answer session, what these year 12 kids wanted to know was, ‘Where are our computers?’ I was sorry for Harry because he is the Speaker and he was not expected to get into the politics of that, but the kids are awake to this government. This is not somebody denying them computers next year or in the next parliament; they were promised these computers in this parliament.

This is the issue that becomes obvious in this appropriation debate. I wrote it down. I am well and truly old enough to have experienced the Whitlam government. I happened to participate in the later years of the Fraser government and I well remember—

See this speech in context