Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Hansard source

I genuinely acknowledge the call prior to one of my ill-disciplined colleagues in front. At the beginning of the Assistant Treasurer’s remarks on the Tax Laws Amendment (2010 Measures No. 4) Bill 2010 he proclaimed to be the great defender of workers’ rights in this country in his former position as head of the AWU, now taken over by the man who wants to be Bill Shorten. We know that when the Assistant Treasurer was there he used to talk about how important it was to have strong unfair dismissal protections in our country for working families and for workers. This year, of course, we saw the greatest unfair dismissal this country has ever seen—a walk upstart case of unlawful dismissal—and I would be very happy to brief the member for Griffith on our options in the Federal Court if he wishes to proceed down that line. The Assistant Treasurer, who as the great defender of unfair dismissals that he once was, did not seem to think that it was such a great protection for that Aussie worker on 23 June this year.

The amendments moved by the shadow Treasurer are good amendments. Firstly, they go through with an election commitment. Obviously members on the other side—as Dougie Cameron described them, the ‘lobotomised zombies’—do not understand that when you make an election commitment it is very important that you keep it. When you say that you are not going to introduce a carbon tax, you do not introduce a carbon tax. When you say that you are going to produce an information sheet for the Australian taxpayer on where their money has been spent, you go through with the promise to produce the receipt on where their money has been spent. That is for those on the other side—the zombies, as Dougie Cameron describes them—to learn. Senator Dougie Cameron has always been a good friend to the Assistant Treasurer.

The receipt outlines importantly where the Australian government spends its money. I think taxpayers would be interested in how much of their taxes each year are going to these important services, to these important issues like defence spending, like foreign affairs. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, who is at the table, has been talking in recent days about foreign aid, and I am sure the Australian public would like to know how much they are individually contributing to each of these projects around the world. I think that is an important element. But they would also like to know how much they are contributing to interest payments each year. We see here, thanks to the shadow Treasurer’s hard work with this, that out of this taxpayer’s $20,000 in tax they would be paying $540 in interest on Labor’s debt. Had they got this receipt under a Liberal government, that number would be zero.

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