Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

We on this side of the chamber believe in smaller government and lower tax. We understand that taxpayer dollars are hard earned. They need to be used carefully, they need to be used responsibly and, most importantly, there needs to be accountability. We in government had a record of cutting taxes. The Rudd, now Gillard, government want to put up taxes. And why do they want to do this? Because they are addicted to spending. There is the alcopops tax, the car tax, the mining tax and the soon-to-be carbon tax. They brought forward the Henry tax review so that they could have a simpler, fairer tax system, and yet of all those 125 taxes listed in there the only suggestion they could come up with was to introduce a brand new tax—the mining tax. They are not making it simpler, not making it fairer. They are certainly making it harder for Australian taxpayers.

We are asking for accountability from this government. We are asking for amendments that we think are highly reasonable. The amendments that we have asked for would put in place a new requirement for the Australian Taxation Office to accompany a notice of assessment for an individual with a receipt showing how their tax has been spent in the financial year for which that assessment applies. The dollar amount spent on the key categories of government expenditure would be based on a nominal proportion of budget expenditure constituted by each function. The amendments also put in place a new requirement for the Australian Taxation Office to accompany a notice of assessment for an individual with a receipt showing the level of Australian government net debt.

Why is it that this government thinks that this is such a radical suggestion? Why is it, in this new paradigm of letting the sunshine in, that they are not prepared to let there be proper accountability? The very fact that they are prepared to reject these amendments exposes them today. It exposes a toxic culture of secrecy in this government. Let’s not forget that this toxic culture of secrecy is not a one-off. It is not simply about not providing a proper tax receipt to Australian taxpayers; it is a culture of secrecy that we have seen in things like the Building the Education Revolution program. We asked for a proper judicial inquiry. They rejected this. Instead, they picked a reviewer of their own to provide a review into their own project. It is a project that has wasted billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money. We only need to look to the pink batts scheme. Again, we asked for a proper judicial inquiry and instead they rejected this and closed down the scheme with not so much as an explanation to all of those small businesses out there that had been put in a difficult situation by this current government.

Finally, we have the NBN. Only this week there have been warnings from the OECD that it would be wrong to pick winners, it would be wrong to legislate to reduce competition, it would be wrong to waste taxpayer dollars and that instead we should be considering value for money. But again they are not prepared to have a cost-benefit analysis done, because they are not prepared to be an accountable government. The reason they are not prepared to be accountable, of course, is that they are an arrogant government. They do not believe that they need to be accountable to the Australian people, and it does not matter how many times Julia Gillard says that she is a reformer, that she is an economic conservative. It does not matter how many times she says it. When we were in government and we brought forward real economic reforms, she opposed them.

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