Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will come to that point. It is a very interesting point that the member opposite raises, and I am going to go to it very shortly. So stay in the chamber and we will discuss precisely that point. Stay right there; I have lots of good information for you. The interesting thing is that we will have this issue of unintended consequences, and I might point out that there might be some unintended consequences over on the other side too, and we will go into my website poll in just a moment. The issue is that understandably, if in future we had a similar magnitude-sized natural disaster, Australians would very reasonably say, ‘I won’t donate because I will have to pay a tax to help cover it.’ That is the first of the unintended consequences that are quite foreseeable as a direct result of this precedent-setting new tax by the Labor Party.

There is another unintended consequence. Witnesses before the House of Representatives economics committee told us that Queensland took a different decision to other state governments insofar as Queensland chose not to seek reinsurance on public assets. What is interesting about that is that in other states—and many of them have state Labor governments—we have the governments choosing to take out reinsurance on public assets, but the Queensland government did not. When I questioned the Queensland Under Treasurer, Mr Bradley, about why that was, he made it clear that as a consequence of the long-term arrangements under the Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements they did not believe it was worthwhile. He actually said it was not commercially feasible, or words to that effect. I am not claiming that to be a direct quote but it is a paraphrase of what he said. So the Queensland government effectively decided not to seek reinsurance with the full knowledge that their liabilities were underwritten by the Commonwealth government. The only reason there are potentially some checks and balances on that is that there is some political pressure associated with that cost: political pressure as it does not look good and the people of Queensland in this particular case—and who knows which other jurisdictions it might be in future—might scratch their heads and say, ‘That wasn’t a wise decision.’ As a direct consequence of this precedent-establishing new tax we know that in future the state government will simply be able to wash their hands of responsibility. They will wash their hands of responsibility because they will say, ‘The Commonwealth is introducing a new tax on this; it’s the Commonwealth’s problem.’ So the moral hazard for the Commonwealth as a direct consequence of the exposure of the Commonwealth to liabilities that may arise at a state government level because of damage to public infrastructure is very real and made even more prominent as a consequence of this new tax.

Those reasons alone provide a very compelling argument as to why this new tax should not be passed by the Houses. Of course, there is a more fundamental issue as well, and that is one of economic management. There is one inescapable reality—that is, with competent economic management there would have been enough fat built up in the federal budget for there to be no need for a new tax. Had the Howard government been in place—or, indeed, its successor, with Tony Abbott as Prime Minister—it would have been able to competently manage Australia’s economy and I have no doubt that we would not find ourselves nearly $100 billion in debt. We would have been able to accommodate the costs associated with this natural disaster out of existing government revenue. The reality is that this has happened many, many times previously. There were the unfortunate and tragic fires in Victoria. The consequence was the loss of so many homes and so many lives, and an economic cost that was estimated at around $4.4 billion. The recovery effort for that natural disaster was funded out of existing government revenue. There was no new tax. There was no need, because the previous government were competent managers.

What is interesting is that I have been running a website poll on my website on this issue. The member opposite, the member for Dobell, and earlier the member for McEwen made comments about the website poll, suggesting that in some way, shape or form my views in this chamber are inconsistent with the views of my electorate. What members opposite do not seem to get is that because it is a poll on my website I have all sorts of diagnostic tools available to me to find out where votes are coming from. Members opposite came and made a big deal about this poll in the 90-second statements before question time, and now the chairman of the economics committee is in here, trying to make a big deal out of it. Interestingly, there were 42 responses to the question on my website poll. Of the 42 responses, there were only 30 unique IP addresses. Two IP addresses which were responsible for multiple votes on my website happened to belong to the Australian Parliament House network. Who’d have thunk it? We have Labor members making a big deal about how a poll on my website does not seem to reflect the community mood, and yet so many of the multiple votes came from the Australian Parliament House network. It is almost as if you can see Labor members opposite clearing their cache, voting on the poll, clearing their cache, voting on the poll—and then coming in here and making a big song and dance about how the results of the poll were in some way inconsistent with the views of this side of the House. In fact, one of the votes even came from the United Kingdom, so at best there were 27 votes from one parliamentarian, originating in Australia. We are going to be running an audit on those 27 votes, but what we know is that the Labor Party has been caught out rigging a poll and coming in here to try to make a song and dance about it. We have the IP addresses. We know the Labor Party is skewing the results of this as it skews the results of everything. Not surprisingly, the old Labor adage is, ‘Vote often, vote early and try to make a big deal of it.’ (Time expired)

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