Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to talk briefly about the shadow Treasurer’s amendments. The intent of the amendments is to explicitly require the Australian Taxation Office to inform individual taxpayers where their taxpayer funds are being spent each year—for example how much is spent on education, welfare—and also to inform individual taxpayers of the total Commonwealth net debt in aggregate and their individual share.

I want to go to the previous speaker, the member for Fraser’s, comment about the budget. This is a critical time, when the government of the day has the opportunity to adopt greater transparency and not just to oppose for the sake of opposing. In my business I realised that transparency went to the heart of efficiency, an efficiency brought about by encouraging people like my internal accountants, my business managers and staff to use openness and transparency in our business to find ways in delivering a stronger bottom line in conjunction with the reappropriation of capital funds—in my case trucks and equipment—to create greater efficiencies in the business. Why should government be any different to this?

As a new member of parliament, this amendment has no political hidden agenda other than you either want transparency or you do not want it. Now the government will argue that the information that these amendments speak to is already available in the budget. Let me tell the House that that information is in the budget, but that is also like saying that everyone in this House could play for the Wallabies. Well you could play for the Wallabies, but unless you have played rugby all your life and you understand the fundamentals of the game, unless you happen to play for a club that has a greater pick-up rate than other clubs, and unless you have a particular sporting skill set that allows you to play at an elite level of athleticism and your fitness levels are that of international athletes, then it is impossible that you could play for the Wallabies.

However, this amendment goes to the heart of transparency for those people who are not elite economical athletes, who simply want to see transparency in this domain when it comes to understanding where their tax dollars are being spent. Here is your opportunity to do the right thing and let the sunshine in. The Independents have asked for more transparency, and as an opposition we are delivering that. We encourage the government not to oppose for the sake of opposing. I support the amendments to this bill.

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