Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last week we witnessed the spectacle of over 200 delegates assembled here in Canberra at a cost of $1 million of taxpayers' money. I suppose that, since this government has already clocked up a combined deficit in just four years of $150 billion, what is another $1 billion to throw away? The tax forum that we had last week was more fitting of a John Cleese comedy—the one where he stood up and said, 'Don't mention the war.' Just as absurdly, at this tax summit there was an order for no-one to mention the carbon tax. After two days of talk, what do we have to show for it? We have a working group. That is it, a working group—another forum, another working group, a lot of promises but absolutely nothing done.

Since we have had a tax forum, it is worth looking at how a tax system will have to work in the future. I was glad to hear the previous speaker talking about the future, because we need to consider how a tax system will work. One thing that we need to do as a nation and as a government is find the money to be able to afford a national disability insurance scheme. This is estimated to cost $6 billion a year.

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