Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Every so often the debate in this House amongst the political class in Australia becomes a little bit disconnected from reality, a little bit disconnected from what is actually going on in the community. It is hard to believe, I know, but it is true. At the moment, something of a collective swoon seems to have taken over the political class and some of the members of the press gallery, love them as I do. Everyone is swooning for this new Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull. I can understand it. He is speaking in full sentences, and that is a welcome relief; it is a welcome change from his predecessor. The number of sentences is less appealing. It is even less appealing that many of those sentences are about himself. But we will adjust to that. What this swoon hides is a real anxiety in the Australian community, the Australian public. We are in the lead-up to Christmas at the moment, and, in the lead-up to Christmas, Australian families do their Christmas shopping, plan for the school holidays and plan what they are going to do for Christmas lunch. Those cost-of-living pressures are really front of mind around the kitchen table, around the dinner table, when we are planning for these things. This anxiety is being fuelled by the actions of the new, Turnbull-led coalition government, by the constant attacks on weekend rates and by the secret plan being pursued by those opposite to increase the GST by 50 per cent, revealed in the Sydney Morning Herald this week after being denied by the Treasurer recently.

I have a message for the Australian public. I have a message for the people in this building. I will do something that I do not believe has been done before in this chamber: I will quote Flavor Flav. I will say, 'Don't believe the hype,' because when Malcolm Turnbull tells you that there has never been a more exciting time to be an Australian, I can tell you the Australian public are not excited about the prospect of a GST. Some may be resigned. There might be a bit of a feeling that this is a fait accompli, given the amount of talk that we hear from those opposite about it. But I say to the Australian public that this is not inevitable and we should fight it. Labor is taking a stand against the secret plan of those opposite to increase the GST by 50 per cent.

The public talk about a lack of resolution in politics sometimes, but Labor's resolution on the GST is clear: the GST is bad for small business, it is bad for everyday Australians, and it is unfair. The Prime Minister likes to say that there will be no tax reform from those opposite that will disadvantage the most vulnerable Australians. Again I say, 'Don't believe the hype.' This government has an appalling record when it comes to fairness. This government has an indefensible record when it comes to the most vulnerable Australians. When we look at NATSEM's modelling of a prospective GST, we find that a 15 per cent GST applied to everything would cause people in the lowest 20 per cent of income brackets—the vulnerable people the Prime Minister talks about—to pay seven per cent more. People in the highest 20 per cent income bracket would pay just three per cent more of their income. A typical Australian family would be $5,000 worse off. It is a tax that targets the people who are least able to afford it.

But we are told by those opposite that the PM would never bring in a tax increase that was unfair; they would compensate people. But I say to the Australian public, 'Do you trust your family budget with the coalition?' This is the same coalition, the same party, the same members sitting opposite, that brought you the horror Abbott budget, about which the current Prime Minister, Mulligan Turnbull—sorry, the member for Wentworth, Malcolm Turnbull—told Alan Jones:

I support unreservedly and wholeheartedly every element in the Budget. Every single one.

This was a budget that, according to NATSEM, would make a couple with two kids in the lowest quintile of Australians 6.6 per cent worse off, while a couple with two kids in the highest quintile would be 0.3 per cent better off. Does that sound fair to you? It does not sound fair to me.

The other bizarre thing about what those opposite are proposing is that their secret plan to increase the GST by 50 per cent seems to be the solution to every problem in Australia. The Treasurer says we do not have a spending problem in Australia; we have a revenue problem. Those opposite have a hype problem when it comes to the GST. So far, the coalition has said that a GST could pay for putting back the $80 billion in school and hospital funding that they cut, cutting personal income tax, cutting company tax, abolishing stamp duty on insurance, abolishing payroll tax, abolishing stamp duty, cutting fuel excise to abolish car rego fees and paying down the national debt. As I say, it is not a spending problem; it is a hype problem. When it comes to hype, there is no bigger hype than the nonsense that is being spouted by the Treasurer about tax policy. He says that when the coalition does tax reform it reduces taxes. He says that the coalition does not deal with revenue by jacking up taxes; that is the Labor way. When you look at the trajectory on this piece of paper—I know that the Treasurer it is not particularly good at numbers at the moment because he still has the training wheels on—the blue represents the coalition and the red represents Labor. The figures go up under the coalition, and they go down under the Labor Party.

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