Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

On 14 September last year, just outside this chamber, the member for Wentworth set a test for Prime Ministers. He laid out a test and said that the member for Warringah had failed that test. It was a test of economic leadership. The member for Wentworth said that any Prime Minister who failed that test should be replaced. He set the test and he has failed it. He set the test for the member for Warringah and then he proceeded to cut him down as Prime Minister. The member for Wentworth should now be replaced as Prime Minister, not in a party room coup, not in a secret meeting at Queanbeyan with Mal Brough, but by the Australian people at the next election, whenever he chooses to call it. Economic leadership will be an issue at the next election. The economic leadership of this Prime Minister, or the lack thereof, will be an issue at the next election. This Prime Minister and this Treasurer will be held to account.

Let's have a look at the Prime Minister and the Treasurer's track record. They came to office and they said, 'We're going to have a mature debate. We can lead the debate on increasing the GST because we're so much better as politicians.' We on this side of the House took a very clear position. We said, 'Increasing the GST will not add to economic growth.' We said, 'Increasing the GST would affect low- and middle-income earners the most.' We said, 'Increasing the GST would lead to a great big money merry-go-round or churn if low-income earners were to be compensated for it.' The Prime Minister and the Treasurer poured scorn on these arguments, they scoffed at these arguments, and then last week we saw the Treasurer at the National Press Club use exactly the same arguments as to why the government was now allegedly not proceeding with an increase in the GST. They have been reduced to repeating the arguments that we have used for the last 12 months. We saw the Treasurer seeking some credit for it, saying, 'Well, we thought about it. We deserve credit for not proceeding with it.' That was his great argument in his 46 minutes of nothing that he gave us last week—the great 46-minute speech. At least Rob Oakeshott had a conclusion and an answer at the end of his 17 minutes. We had 46 minutes of nothing. This is a Treasurer who gives the witness protection program a bad name! He can no longer appear even on his favourite radio programs to defend a record which does not exist.

It is quite clear that, when robbed of their agenda of increasing the GST—their one single idea of increasing the GST and putting it on health, fresh food and education—they have nothing. They have had 2½ years in office—six months for the Prime Minister and the Treasurer—and, with all the resources of the Treasury and the entire bureaucracy, they have not one single idea. All they can come up with is scare campaigns on our ideas. That is the entire economic agenda of the Prime Minister. That is what dominates his question time performance—not his own agenda, not the government's core business, but peddling mistruths about Labor Party policies. We are happy to talk about Labor Party policies because we have some. We have policies to debate. We have ideas to discuss. The Prime Minister comes to the dispatch box with an empty briefcase.

They cannot even get the scare campaign right. The Prime Minister has now decided to embark on a scare campaign on capital gains tax. He has done it on negative gearing—I will come to that in a moment—but it is now on the capital gains tax. Let's be clear: capital gains tax should be reformed. It is one of the fastest-growing tax concessions in the federal budget. If you earn your money on the factory floor, pounding the streets as a police officer, as a nurse in a hospital or in any occupation in the nation, you pay your full marginal rate of tax. But if you earn your money through a good investment—good luck to you—you pay half the marginal rate of tax. We say, 'When you're looking at the budget and fairness, that can't stand.' We say, 'If you think the pension should be cut or $80 billion worth of funding should be cut from health and education, we have a different idea.' We say, 'There can still be a concession for capital gains, but let's make it 25 per cent. That would be fairer.' The fact of the matter is that 70 per cent of the capital gains tax discount benefit goes to the top 10 per cent of income earners in Australia. Of course, the Prime Minister rides to its defence. Of course, he rushes in to defend the capital gains tax discount. But he gets it wrong as he does so. He stood at the dispatch box yesterday and claimed it would discourage foreign investment and drive out jobs from foreign investment, conveniently forgetting that the discount does not apply to foreign resident investors in Australia. Then he tried to waffle his way through that and say, 'It'll discourage corporations from setting up in Australia.' Well, incorporated entities do not get the capital gains tax discount either.

But the biggest problem was, of course, that he had his own plans to do with capital gains tax, his own plans to rein in the capital gains tax discount on superannuation. We had looked at that proposal and we said no. Superannuation is Australians saving for their future through compulsory savings. We will leave the capital gains tax discount undisturbed by our policy. But this Prime Minister has a different view and he does not have the honesty or the guts to tell the Australian people about it in a straight fashion. He chooses instead to launch a scare campaign about it. He launches the scare campaign. We have seen it done in this House before by Liberal prime ministers, by the member for Warringah. But to paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen: 'We know Tony Abbott, we worked with Tony Abbott, and this Prime Minister is no Tony Abbott.' He cannot conduct a scare campaign that he does not believe in, because he cannot even get his facts straight. We saw this on the capital gains tax and we see it on negative gearing.

Frankly, this goes to the Prime Minister's character: the Prime Minister willing to mislead about opposition policies, the Prime Minister willing to be dishonest about opposition policies. He runs a campaign saying that property prices will fall if negative gearing is abolished for anything except new properties. He says how terrible it will be if property prices actually fall. Then, at the dispatch box today, he says, 'Property prices are falling in Perth.' Well, guess what. They have negative gearing in Perth too—now, as we speak. And property prices, the Prime Minister reveals today, are on the decline in Western Australia.

What we see is a Prime Minister willing to mislead, to scare—the old 'reds under the bed' or 'put your money under the bed'. It is the old Liberal Party tactic: when in doubt, launch a scare campaign. We know that this argument does not stand up. Has the Prime Minister released any modelling to show that house prices will collapse under Labor's policies? He has got all the Treasury working for him, all the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Have we seen a document, one little document, of modelling released by the Prime Minister? Not a word.

And of course we have seen eminent economists debunk the Prime Minister's myth. We have seen commentators point out just how poor the Prime Minister's approach is. We saw Greg Jericho say of the Prime Minister's argument, 'It's a pretty silly argument that doesn't hold up under close examination.' But perhaps most damning of all, at five past two today—honourable members might not be aware—the economics editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, Ross Gittins, said of this Prime Minister: 'Expectations were high, but now the Prime Minister is resorting to the same cheap tactics as the man he overthrew.' Isn't that right—the same cheap tactics as the man he overthrew, because that is all the Liberals have got.

We should have known, in fairness, that the government were planning an attack on superannuation through the capital gains tax, because they told us they were not. That is always a dead giveaway when it comes to this government. We had the Prime Minister saying that changing the capital gains tax played no part in the government's thinking. Today his defence was, 'Oh, that capital gains tax. I was talking about another capital gains tax.' Well, there is one capital gains tax in Australia. There is only one. The discount may apply differently, but there is one capital gains tax in Australia. When he said, 'We are not going to change it; it's not part of our thinking,' he cannot claim he meant the other one. There is no other capital gains tax for him to be talking about. The Prime Minister has been caught red-handed misleading the Australian people. After the Treasurer said that there would be no changes to superannuation, and the Prime Minister said that there would be no changes to capital gains tax, of course there are now going to be changes to capital gains tax and superannuation, because it is what they do: they say one thing and they do another.

What is very clear is that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer had a plan to knock off Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey but, apart from increasing the GST, they had no idea as to what to do next. I would have thought the Treasurer would want to take this MPI. I would have thought the Treasurer would want to be here to respond. He says he wants a debate, well, let us have one. I will debate him here. I will debate him at the National Press Club. I will debate him wherever he likes. But he has got to come with a policy, with a plan and with a vision. If he has not got one, he should make way for us, because we do. (Time expired)

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