Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Does he? I am paying too great a tribute. You should listen to what I say, Bill, you really should. Just open your ears, mate. All of them made a significant contribution and I was waiting for the plethora of Labor members to come into this place and back the Assistant Treasurer. I want to give you a little tip, old fella: if you want to get the numbers against Julia, you will have to do better than that. You will have to get a few others in here. There was not one member of the government backbench prepared to support the Assistant Treasurer in this debate. Even in my old days as a minister, if we were in committee, I would roll out some backbenchers. Even if I had to explain to them in detail what the debate was about, they would still come in to defend me and the government. But here we have the Assistant Treasurer standing on his lonesome out in the middle of the Simpson Desert. He will probably run into Burke and Wills, because they are lost as well.

In his numerous defences of the indefensible position of the government, the Assistant Treasurer has cited every single conceivable reason why this amendment should be opposed on the basis of national security—the fear that al-Qaeda is going to take away all that information about Australian taxpayers’ contributions each year. He has cited the post office, he has cited the tax office and he has cited the Treasury. Soon we will have the Altona chapter of the Girl Guides opposing the provision of transparent information to Australian taxpayers. Or perhaps he will cite someone of a more left wing nature: the people’s liberation front of Liberia—they oppose Australians getting information about where their tax is going. This is exactly what they cling to. The people’s liberation front of Liberia, being stacked out in the Assistant Treasurer’s branch, are already committed to the Labor Party, as are the Girl Guides of Altona, who assisted the Prime Minister with her preselection after she could not win preselection against old Lindsay Tanner.

Speaking of the old finance minister, where is he? Where is the economic credibility of the Labor Party? It retired after one term. No wonder! The poor old fellow, he threw his arms in the air and said: ‘What happened? I thought we were fiscal conservatives. I believed Kevin. I believed those ads that we are fiscal conservatives in the Labor Party.’ You know what? He was a man of honour. You would share this view, Deputy Speaker—the former member for Melbourne was a man of honour; he was a man of integrity. He cringed at the spendathon of the Labor Party. Sadly there is not one person left within the fibre and ranks of the parliamentary Labor Party that believes in surpluses, let alone ever delivers a surplus.

Old Swannie there, every year he comes out and says: ‘We are going to deliver a surplus’—with feigned indignation and a reach for the water—‘we will deliver a surplus one day. Once upon a time, we will deliver a surplus.’ He says it emphatically so everyone believes him, but of course Labor never has delivered a surplus and, sadly, it never will deliver a surplus. That is why they do not want taxpayers to know where their money is going. That is why they do not want transparency.

In the deal with the Independents after the recent election, there they were—the Labor Party and the Independents were going to blow the lid off Canberra so that everyone could see the entrails of the workings of government. They were going to have a transparent government, an honest government. ‘Let the sunshine in. Turn off the lights, we will not need them any more because—forget Freedom of Information which never worked at any rate—we are going to release all the documents. We are going to tell everyone in Australia exactly where their money is going, how it is spent and how the wheels turn in government.’ If the wheels ever do turn in government.

We will keep introducing this amendment. Every time there is a tax bill, we will make this the signature of the Labor Party’s failure, its failure to deliver transparency to Australian taxpayers. We believe in honesty. We believe in transparency. (Time expired)

See this speech in context