Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Tax Laws Amendment (2013 Measures No. 2) Bill 2013. I have had the opportunity to raise this matter on the handling of this bill in the chamber previously. I did so as the Deputy Chair of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics. The shadow Treasurer and the member for Wright have touched on the journey we have gone on to arrive at this destination. It has been a convoluted journey, but it has been a relatively short journey because this tax laws amendment bill No. 2, which contains over $10 billion of additional receipts for the federal Labor government, has been rammed through this parliament without appropriate parliamentary scrutiny.

For a measure like this, which I am informed by the shadow Treasurer is the single biggest revenue item in a tax laws amendment bill that we have seen in the parliament's history, it is extraordinary to think that this Labor government is so bereft of any ability to conform to appropriate levels of scrutiny, with absolutely no desire to provide any adequate justification, no attempt to explain to the Australian people why it is doing what it is doing and, most concerningly, no regard for the consequent impact as a result of these changes on thousands, if not tens of thousands, of stakeholders across the Australian economy—indeed, hundreds of thousands, when you consider schedule 1 alone.

So what has been the journey for the Australian Labor Party? How have we reached this new low when it comes to their inability to make any of the big calls correctly? We know that the Australian Labor Party has world's greatest Treasurer over there, the member for Lilley—you would have to question the methodology about how they arrived at that conclusion but, that notwithstanding, he has got the gong and he is going to hold it with all his might. I suspect he will hold that gong with more resilience than any State of Origin player did last night with the ball, but he is going to hold on to that precious little gong that he has because, frankly, that is all he has. His track record does not attest to the fact that he is the world's greatest Treasurer. The tax record of the member for Lilley is to be up to his eyeballs in debt and deficit and to make one false promise after another, but that is entirely consistent with the Prime Minister, so we should not be surprised.

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