Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Hansard source

Minister, you are entitled to speak on the bill. Your name is not on the list. There are no Labor members' names on the list. There is a good reason for it. You are ashamed of what you have done to Australian families and what you are about to do to Australian families with your world's biggest carbon tax—a carbon tax you promised would not be implemented. I say to the minister, if she wants to speak on this bill, she should stand up after I finish my contribution and speak on this bill, represent those people from Ballarat, tell them why she supports this carbon tax, tell them why she wants this carbon tax to increase their costs and tell them why this is just an attempt by this government to try and sugar coat what is the nastiest pill that Australian families have faced in a very long time.

Last night we saw the Treasurer's fifth budget delivered. Each budget in this place has some sort of narrative to it and it tells a story about the government's direction. Last night what we saw was a budget which was about trying to enhance the electoral stocks of this Prime Minister and this government. It was a last-gasp effort to try and get a boost in the polls, to hold back the movement of MPs on the government benches. The member for Griffith may be their last salvation—the person who they so abused not too long ago and who they will no doubt, in just a little while, turn to when this sugar hit of the electoral prospects also fails. Last night we saw a budget which was built on a house of cards. I suspect the Treasurer does not think he will ever have to implement it, because the forecasts in it are so unbelievable—you would have fairies at the bottom of the garden to expect that the expectations in that budget of revenue increases, for instance, will be met.

I note that the Australian journalist Adam Crichton, who understands this far better than most, has written an article today about the biggest increase in tax receipts in three decades; that the expectation in the budget is that somehow, while growth will be a trend, there is going to be an enormous growth of 12 per cent in the next financial year of receipts—government receipts, taxation receipts—to create this falsehood of a surplus.

We know that last year the government forecast there would be a deficit in last year's budget of $22 billion. If we refer to the budget papers, which were tabled last night, we see that that blew out to $44 billion. We are now expected to believe that this government can manage the budget back from a $44 billion deficit—which followed on from a $47 billion deficit which followed on from a $54 billion deficit which followed on from a $27 billion deficit—and that somehow it is going to turn around some $45 billion in one financial year, no doubt through a whole lot of trickery in the budget papers, and it is going to stop wasting Australian taxpayers' money when all it has done in its five years of government is just that.

We see it again with this piece of legislation, one which is trying to overturn the whole intent of the original education tax refund; a proposal, as the member for Macarthur put so well, that the opposition sought to improve at the last election. In fact, at the last election the government opposed what we were trying to do because it would not address the educational needs of Australian children. Now people will be handed cash with no expectation at all that they will spend it on education expenses. Indeed, what this cash bonus is all about is for people to be able to pay their soaring electricity bills. The government knows that it has to bribe and compensate people for the pain that it is about to inflict.

This is no longer about assisting educational outcomes for Australian families or schoolchildren, which the opposition's policy sought to improve at the last election by expanding the number of items that this could be spent on by keeping receipts and claiming it through the taxation system, which has been a long-practised way of focusing the money. This, instead, through this piece of legislation, is attempting to—and I hope this legislation does not pass; I hope the Independents see that this cash hit, like the cash hit during the stimulus package back in 2008-09, will be ineffective and wasted. That is why we see a debt soaring up to $240 billion. Last night the credit card was extended: it has gone from $250 billion to $300 billion, and we know that the Labor Party will make the most of its extension, as it has each time it has extended its credit card.

This bill does no more than try to find a way of compensating people for a carbon tax which is about to hit them. If this bill is seriously about education expenses, why is it being pulled forward to be delivered in June this year? Why are payments all of a sudden expected to be made in the next financial year being brought forward and why is this bill being rushed through the parliament so that money is spent in this financial year? It beggars belief. It does not require any proof that it is being used for educational purposes at all. It is an attempt to put money in people's bank accounts and hope and pray that they do not take out their anger, as we know they are, on Labor's members of parliament when we inevitably go to the next election.

We know—and, thankfully, a backbench MP on the government side helpfully told a journalist off the record just two days ago—that you cannot go doorknocking at the moment without being beaten up about the carbon tax. We all know: when we are in public at the moment, every time we go to a function, all people want to talk to us about is the carbon tax, the incompetence of the government, the government's judgment in backing people like the member for Dobell and standing by the member for Dobell and his use of credit cards. What is it with this party and the use of credit cards? What is it with this party and extending cards and using other people's money? What is it with this party?

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