Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I withdraw the word ‘cunning’. The information that the opposition wants to include on where taxpayers’ money is spent is currently in the public domain. I understand perfectly well that the opposition would like a cheat sheet, because it would help them in what they do. But the budget papers are available on the internet. This would merely duplicate existing information. This is a legislative amendment version of the Manager of Opposition Business’s constant inane requests in this place to table newspaper clippings, which are already on the public record. Budget updates will mean that the information on the tax receipt would differ depending on which day taxpayers received their assessment. Something printed today may not reflect the precise circumstances in the updated information of a modern government.

The member for North Sydney’s proposal also does not accurately reflect the significant contribution other taxes, such as business taxes, make to funding welfare, health, schools, highways, the environmental projects so unbeloved of the opposition, consular services, defending our country and so on and so forth. Furthermore, if accepted, the opposition’s proposed amendments would come at a significant cost and increase complexity for the Australian Taxation Office. They would certainly need to explore the legal implications of providing this great big paper chase.

Other points which should be made when one considers the merit of the opposition’s amendments is that if taxpayers are not satisfied with the published allocation—in other words, they do not agree with the information they have received in what I have to say is a fairly unsophisticated, Hockeyesque format on a single piece of paper—we could see all sorts of litigation with the ATO. This would also have significant resource implications. I would remind the shadow Treasurer of the law of unintended consequences.

The implementation of the shadow Treasurer’s amendments will mean that we have the tax file numbers of millions of pay-as-you-go taxpayers floating around raising security concerns about information integrity. The reality is that there is no policy substance to these amendments. Rather, what we see is an attempt to grandstand and an ill-fated attempt to demonstrate continuing irrelevance to the process of legislation in this parliament.

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