Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

I actually do. I actually think that it is really interesting. I can see that there is another member of the government who does not think that tax law is sexy, but they are wrong and should get into it. It is really interesting.

Anyway, it was a policy that responded to the behaviour of various companies and improved the integrity of the tax system at that point. This small change in schedule 1 deals with the fact that in certain cases where the same person or group has influence over the acquired entity and the inquiring entity they were able to defer the capital gains tax indefinitely. This little piece of tax law improves something that was introduced back in 2012-13 and improves the integrity of the tax system. It is an important small change.

The interesting thing about this is that, like so many of the bills this House introduces, it refers to what the Labor government actually did. Many times last year I sat in caucus looking at the list of bills that were going to be introduced into the House, and unless they had the words 'abolish', 'cut' or 'repeal' in them, you could bet that the vast majority of them were actually Labor bills or referred to work that we had done when we were in government that were finally being brought to the House. This is another example of that. This does not reflect on the work of this government; this actually reflects on the good work of the previous government. That is schedule 1.

Schedule 2 is actually something specific to this government. Schedule 3 is not, but schedule 2 is. As a general rule Australian resident individuals are taxed on their worldwide income through the Australian personal income tax system. As the member for Fraser said, the Labor opposition—and I assume the Abbott government—agrees that a person should pay tax in one jurisdiction or another. We have been very strong on that. We have also been strong on corporations having the same responsibility. The government are less strong on that, but they are very strong on individuals paying tax in one jurisdiction or another. It would be nice to see some TSLABs come up that reflected their work in corporate payments, not just individuals.

This was originally introduced to provide relief from double taxation, essentially for aid workers and people who worked overseas for not less than 91 continuous days. Tax law always says 'not less than' and 'not more than'. It is interesting language. You have to pause and think about it for a bit, but it is quite interesting. That was its purpose We have found since then that the measure is no longer really applicable so it is no longer necessary. Essentially, schedule 2 just makes a small change to the law relating to people working overseas and it will raise $6.7 million over the next four years. It is a very minor change. It will affect a small number of people. It will raise $6.7 million over four years. It is the kind of mechanical work that we would normally see governments do.

By the way, in past governments we would very rarely discuss this kind of legislation in this House. This kind of bill was usually debated in the Federation Chamber. It is very rarely debated in the main House, because we usually have more important legislation to consider here. This government does not actually have much on the legislative agenda. For example, if you look at the day to day we have got the abolition of bills that have not been in use for decades, we have got the removal of commas, we have got the removal of a few hyphens, we have got this bill and we have got another bill that rolls back tax transparency legislation for private owned companies from the disclosure of taxpayer information—and that is it on the agenda in this House today.

Schedule 3 is also something that refers back. There are only three schedules in this bill. Schedule 3 refers back, again, to the work of the previous government, not the work of this government. Schedule 3 is about small lost member accounts. It does something that was introduced by Labor. Back in 2013, Labor announced that the threshold for super accounts which would be transferred to the ATO would rise to $4,000 from 31 December 2015 and from $6,000 from 31 December 2016.

This small but significant change in schedule 3 reflects the policy of the Labor government back in 2013 and it is important. Again, it reflects the extraordinary amount of work that Labor did in the super arena in its time in government. It does not reflect the work that this government has done at all. It reflects the work that the previous government did and brings it two years later into Australian tax law. Essentially Labor did an incredible amount of work, having introduced the super compulsory superannuation nearly two decades ago now.

We found that a large number of people had a variety of super policies, some very small, some that they had forgotten about. Some people went to work for one employer, a super scheme was started, they moved on to another employer and some of us—and I was one of them—had a number of super accounts that were sitting out there in the ether. I could not remember where they were; they were hard to find. We found that there were millions of super accounts that were essentially sitting idle with large fees coming out every year and eroding the value of those super accounts. We did an extraordinary amount of work in government on assisting people to find their lost super. We set up processes and systems where people could easily identify past superannuation accounts and amalgamate them if they chose to in order to keep their fees low.

This small change to the superannuation law increases the value of the accounts that are now transferred to the ATO from $2,000 to $6,000 over the next couple of years. This means that those accounts will be transferred to the ATO. If a person finds those accounts again, they can have them back again with interest at CPI. It ensures that the small superannuation accounts, of which there are many in Australia, are not eaten up by fees. It is a very nice piece of policy. Again, it demonstrates the previous Labor government's commitment to making our superannuation system sustainable and fair.

I cannot say though that we have had the same commitment to super from the current government; in fact, quite the contrary. Even though they say they are in favour of superannuation; their actions show something else. They claim that they will not touch super but actually they already have. The coalition wound back superannuation tax concessions for some of our lowest-income workers, some 3.6 million workers, that benefited from the low-income superannuation concession earning less than $37,000 per annum. They now virtually receive no concession on their superannuation contributions thanks to the government's decision to scrap the low-income super contributions scheme.

This is a government that claims to be supportive of superannuation, that proudly defends some of the highest income earners from superannuation but at the same time hacks away at the savings on the earnings of people who earn the least in this country, a pattern that we have seen from this government over and over again. When we see the government come in here with cuts on their mind, you can bet they will be aimed at the people who earn the least. You can bet they will be aimed at pensioners, for example. Unable in their first budget to really hit pensioners as hard as they wanted to, they moved up to attack part pensioners in the second budget. They are still leaving alone the people that earn $100,000 or more. They are leaving those alone. They are protecting those, they are defending those at the same time that they have already ripped away superannuation concessions from 3.6 million workers that earn less and $37,000 a year.

I would love to see some TSLABs in this House that actually do reflect a government that is looking forward. I would love to see TSLABs in this House that deal with things that this government is building. I would love to see that. This is not one of them. This TSLAB has three schedules, two of which refer to the work of the past government not this one. It is a shame. I think the Australian people need more from this government. It is about time they tried to deliver. Perhaps good government can start tomorrow.

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