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

I have a soft spot for the member for Griffith. Unlike the Assistant Treasurer, I do have a soft spot for him. He is a good man. Just keep your hands well displayed there, Bill! Keep them up; keep them above the table! We do not know what you have in your holster, old son; we can only guess! He is the one who has to go through the metal detector on the way into parliament! You have to be careful of the smiley ones! I am having a great time paying out on this guy, but I had better get back to the amendments.

The amendments are about giving Australians proper information. We all recall the sanctimonious line from the now Prime Minister that the sunshine was going to come in. The member for Lyne repeated it: ‘Let the sun shine. Let us have a transparent and open parliament.’ When we first tested the government on that, asking for all the information on the Henry tax review, what did they do? They closed it down. Ken Henry ran off and got flawed legal advice from the Australian Government Solicitor that the clerks of the parliament were lying and that the parliament did not have the power to order the release of all the documents on the Henry tax review. Lord knows about the Henry tax review. To be fair to the member for Griffith, he was set up by that lean and hungry Treasurer, who went to him and said, ‘We are going to have this tax review.’ It was the Treasurer who came up with the idea of the mining tax. What a disaster that was.

Australians have the right to know where their taxes are going. It was the coalition, as part of its transparency platform in the lead-up to the election, that outlined that every Australian taxpayer should get a tax receipt from the tax office. I emphasise that it would cost the tax office very little to send a letter out to people saying, ‘Thank you for paying tax.’ Our mock tax receipt says:

The Australian Government thanks you for the $20,000 tax* you have paid for 2010-11. This tax receipt details where your taxes have been spent (based on a nominal distribution of Budget expenses by function) and the level of Australian Government debt.

We also tell the taxpayer how much the level of Australian net debt is, which is a damn good idea, and we tell them, if they are paying $20,000 in tax, exactly where that money would go—for example, $6,480 on welfare, $3,200 on health, $1,860 on education, $1,180 on defence, $280 on transport and communications, $540 on public debt interest and so on. So we are putting to the Australian taxpayer exactly where their money is being spent by the Australian government.

The benefit of this is that it makes it more explicable than the budget itself, which deals in billions and billions of dollars, and it explains exactly to those people who pay the tax where the money is going and how reliable and trustworthy the government is. That is probably why the government want to oppose these amendments. They do not want disclosure. They do not want to tell the Australian people where they are spending their money, because that is the Labor Party. They spend. They are very good at that. They are accomplished. They are world leaders in that regard. But I would say that the Australian people do want to know where that money is going.

This is as much a challenge for the Labor Party as it is for the Independents. Isn’t this about transparency? Isn’t this about honesty? Isn’t this being upfront with the Australian people? I know that this is immensely popular out there with the Australian people. They do want to know where their money is going. They do want to know how the government is spending their money. If the Labor Party were serious about transparency and honesty and if they were serious not just about Sunrise but about sunshine then I would say to them that they should support this sensible amendment which will cost very little to implement but, at the end of the day, will give Australians more information about how their money is being spent.

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