Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is absolute hypocrisy, as pointed out by the Parliamentary Secretary for Defence. You do not say you want to see lower personal tax and then promise one million people that you will reduce the tax-free threshold. They talk about costs of living but fight against every single effort that we have put forward to help families and to secure jobs.

It is worth noting that nearly a million people taken out the taxation system are 60 per cent women. Hundreds of thousands of those people taken out will be students and young people. In denying those people a tax break the coalition seeks to give a tax break to the richest woman in the world; someone who, every single second of the day, earns as much as a worker on minimum wage earns in one single week. If you were a young person and you scored a job to help pay your way through TAFE or uni, what would you think of a political party that came along and said: 'We think you should pay more tax. We think Gina Rinehart should pay less, but we think you should pay more, and that is why we are reducing the tax-free threshold.' Talk about making life harder for young people! There they are, studying, trying to get ahead and to make their way in the world, and those opposite come along saying that they want to increase tax.

In my electorate 58,000 people will see a tax cut. In my electorate 19,000 will see an increase in family tax benefit payments and 24,000 pensioners will see a lift in their pension. Mind you, if you are concerned about cost-of-living increases—and I raise this with the member for Flinders because he talked a lot about my home state—5,000 of those 24,000 pensioners in the electorate of Chifley are worried that they will see an increase in their public housing rents because Barry O'Farrell will increase those rents just at the time we are providing assistance.

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