Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister to the Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

You would be a fun guy to have at a party, Shadow Treasurer: things are so bad, bad, bad—everything is so bad. You would be the life of any party, I can tell you. You would not think that on a day when 58,600 people gained employment in this country we would have the shadow Treasurer enter this chamber and lecture us about how bad things are in the Australian economy. You would not think at a time when consumer confidence is on the rise and we see in the consumer confidence figures that consumers in the next month are planning the biggest Christmas spend in seven years. That is what is forecast for the next month.

You would think that the shadow Treasurer would come in here with a plan to explain to the Australian people how they can make it easier to work, save and invest for those Australians who are doing it tough and working hard. But what we heard from the shadow Treasurer is an attack on plans that the government do not have, an attack on policies that we have not announced and an attack on mythical tax policies that they have created, completely isolated from everything that the Prime Minister has been talking about. It is so misleading that I think it is not fooling ordinary people. It is so misleading to the Australian people that it will not go down well when the shadow Treasurer returns to Fowler or McMahon, or wherever he goes back to, and says, 'This is our plan and this is your plan.'

You said you had a tax plan but you just had 10 minutes, shadow Treasurer, to tell the Australian people what that tax plan is. What did you say about your tax plan? Well, you did not say anything about your tax plan. You did not have one word to say about your tax plan.

What the government has said is: we have a process in place, a white paper process, which is underway currently, where we are putting all things back on the table. We are considering the tax mix, absolutely, and that of course is in response to the fact that people on average wages today are now in the second-highest tax bracket. There is nobody in this chamber, listening to this debate today who would think it is okay that average wage earners are now in the highest tax bracket. It is a critical concern for Australians. It is a critical concern for those Australians working very hard, paying an even higher rate of tax now. That is the one thing you will never hear from the Labor Party. They talk a lot about fairness to those on welfare. They talk a lot about fairness to those on lower incomes. Of course, as the Prime Minister says, any changes to the tax system must be fair. But the Labor Party never talks about fairness to those people who work for a living, fairness to those people on average incomes who are paying more and more of their tax in income tax.

Where is the shadow Treasurer saying this is unfair? It is unfair that average income earners are now in the second highest tax bracket. Why won't the Labor Party just say it? Why won't they acknowledge that something has to be done to address bracket creep, to address the fact that people are working harder and harder for less and less of their own money? That is the principle that any tax system must be constructed on. Australia has the second highest reliance on income tax in the world. We have one of the highest reliances on corporate tax as well. If we do not lower our corporate taxes and become competitive with our international neighbours here in the Asia-Pacific region and around the world—if we have one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world—we will not be able to compete effectively. We will not be able to attract more investment and more jobs or have more prosperity for all Australians.

Yet you will not hear this challenge that confronts Australians crossing the opposition's lips. Instead they criticise any attempt to have a national debate, any constructive process that the government has to bring forward plans.

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