David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Even by the very low standards of those opposite, this has been a particularly lacklustre performance on this MPI. I think an objective observer would agree with that. I think a part of the reason is that those opposite are completely bereft of ideas. They have been running around the country for the past year or so, distributing unfunded empathy and talking a lot about fairness. But what they have not done is come up with any alternative plans or rationale for their political philosophy other than a consistent addiction to increased taxation.

I think that lack of a rationale is really telling and really obvious when you look at the reaction to the social services minister's statements around pensions reform in the last couple of weeks. What we saw there was the minister make some difficult decisions, but important decisions which would see further benefits for people generally at the lower assets level who are on the pension—and substantial increases in many cases—but with a changed taper rate for people at the higher end of assets. You would expect those opposite to embrace such a plan, but what we saw was the opposition leader sort of squirming around trying to work out how he could oppose such a sensible plan that obviously contributed substantially to budget repair.

It is really sad when you see a politician bereft of a philosophy and a politician searching for a rationale. That is what those opposite are doing. You can only run around the country and talk about fairness for so long before people start to ask: 'What are you going to do about it?' The thing that we can draw together very consistently from those opposite is an absolute belief that more tax is a good thing. The year of ideas has consisted of two ideas, both very bad ideas and both related to taxation.

The shadow Treasurer described the first capital idea of those opposite—the misguided plan to change the thin capitalisation rules for multinational corporations—as the opening salvo in the battle of ideas. If that was the opening salvo, it was fired from a very small pop gun, because that is an idea which will raise a very small amount of money but will cause a lot of uncertainty in the corporate sector and cost substantial jobs. Their other idea was to increase superannuation taxes. So for people who have saved, who have managed to get themselves to a point of being financially solid in retirement, they said, 'We do not want you to do that; we want to increase tax on those people.' We reject that philosophy.

This tax theme we see through Labor in opposition and we see it through Labor in government. We talk a lot about the carbon tax, one of the great public policy failures of Australian history. We know that they will bring it back. The reason we know that they will bring it back is because they have said so. It is not a scare campaign; they have said it so that means you would have to think it would happen. The shadow Assistant Treasurer was shouting from the rooftops in an editorial some time ago about his love for the carbon tax and also the mining tax, which, of course, raised some three per cent of what it was budgeted to raise whilst smashing the mining industry in Western Australia in particular.

There is another, perhaps less well known, tax that the Labor Party decided to put on the economy when last in office, and that was on employee share options. Many employees, particularly in high-growth companies in the technology sector and other places, are not paid a big salary, but they are given an incentive in the form of share options. The way that works is that you basically get a piece of paper that says: 'If everything works out, this could be worth a substantial amount of money in four or five years time. It's worth nothing today.' But what Labor did, extraordinarily, was tax employees on the value of what might happen in four or five years time, even though that employee had no money today, which made these schemes in fact a disincentive for employees. Under the stewardship of the Minister for Small Business, we have gotten rid of that bad tax. We are opposed to a philosophy that says 'tax more', and that is a big difference between our parties. (Time expired)

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