Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

I second the amendment. Mathias Cormann, the Minister for Finance, in an interview with David Speers this afternoon, threw the Treasurer under a bus not once, not twice and not three times but on no fewer than 10 occasions. He threw the Treasurer under a bus. This government is dysfunctional, it is incompetent and it is in chaos. There is no better example than the matter we have before us this afternoon, a matter that has been dragging on now for 18 months. Eighteen months ago, the then Treasurer of this government announced a $540 million backpacker tax. They thought that was a wonderful idea, at a time when backpackers were already deserting Australia. Can you imagine? Farmers, growers and tourism operators in this country were already struggling back in early 2015 to secure the backpacker labour they needed, and what did this genius of a government do? They put a 32.5 per cent tax on them. It takes a special sort of genius to come up with that plan.

When asked about this in an interview at the time, the now Deputy Prime Minister said, 'This is all about putting Australian workers back on a level playing field.' They thought they could get away with a $540 million tax revenue grab and make it about protecting Australian jobs. They were wrong and, by midway through the most recent election campaign, they worked out they were wrong—and what did they do? They walked both sides of the street. They announced a review, which, by the way, allowed the taxation commissioner to defer the introduction of the 32.5 per cent tax until 1 January of next year. So what did they do throughout the balance of the election campaign? They kept the $500 million in revenue and continued to spend it throughout the election campaign—

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