Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure that I stand to make my contribution to the statement on tax reform. I would like to congratulate the Prime Minister and the Treasurer for holding the tax forum here last week. It was really refreshing to see a government that is prepared to embrace tax reform and to examine the way that they are going to do things.

From my electorate I could see the excitement as people from business, industry, unions, employers, workers, and members of this parliament joined together to discuss tax reform. Since the start of 2010 the government has announced 32 reforms that deliver on direction identified in tax reviews. It is a great pleasure to see that the member for Oxley has joined us, because the member for Oxley has been very involved, over the period that he has been in parliament, in issues surrounding tax reform. Tax reform is one of the most important issues, I think, facing our society, because unless we reform our tax system—unless we look at doing things differently—there will be a very negative impact on employment and jobs. If the tax system does not keep up with the expectations and needs of our society it will affect our productivity and economy.

I listened to the previous speaker from the opposition. He spent his whole contribution in this debate not talking about the future or what exciting new things can be done to improve the way our economy functions but talking about the clean energy legislation. He referred to it as a carbon tax. He was reading out comments from people in his electorate. I think he missed a unique opportunity. I note that the member for Forde put forward some positive ideas and the member for Maranoa showed that he is a man who can think about the issues and the need to change. That was what the forum was about. It was about embracing the spirit of all the sectors of our community and saying, 'How can we do this better? What outcome could we come up with that is going to deliver a better tax system and a better economy for our country?'

As I mentioned earlier, 32 reforms have been delivered. The first wave was aimed fairly and squarely at responding to the emerging pressures of the patchwork economy and delivering on core directions in tax review. It is well known that we do have a patchwork economy. In the area I represent we have got a strong mining industry, which has seen the economy in the Hunter thrive. But there are other areas that are struggling, and the government wants to look at the whole economy, address the whole issue and address this patchwork economy.

One way of doing that is to get a better return for Australia's non-renewable resources through a profit based tax. Members of the opposition have opposed this. They have opposed any resource rent tax and they have said that they will repeal it if they are elected. I say to the members of the opposition that they need to think long and hard about this. This is mainly foreign companies operating in Australia, dragging out our resources. This is about them giving a fair return for those resources that they are taking out of our country. We want our resource industry to continue to thrive but we want those companies to contribute to our economy.

The other thing that was very, very refreshing that came out of that was the increase of tax-free threshold that was voted through parliament today—which those on the other side of this House opposed—and the commitment that was made at the tax forum to lift that tax-free threshold to $21,000. I congratulate the Prime Minister and the Treasurer for holding the tax forum and for engendering the discussion that took place. (Time expired)

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