Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

What we are seeing here is government by chaos. The backpacker tax fiasco has gone from being a problem to a major problem to a chaotic problem to a farce. It reached farce today when we had a joint statement on the letterhead of the Treasurer from the new coalition: Scott Morrison and Senator Di Natale. You pick up a few things when you have been in this place a while. When the Treasurer attempted to table the letter but then had a look at it and put it back on the dispatch box and did not really want to table it, you knew that he had botched it.

The reason that has happened is that it is such policy on the run, just like the legislation that is before us now, the Superannuation (Departing Australia Superannuation Payments Tax) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2016. This is legislation whereby we heard, as the Manager of Opposition Business indicated, silence in this chamber. The Hansard will appear with a couple of blank pages, because we had no copies of the bill that was before the House, no copies of the explanatory memorandum and no consultation with anyone about this deal that had been done. What a hopeless deal it is, from the government's own perspective. The backpacker tax has become the backtracker tax. Today, this deal costs $155 million of backtracking by this government on its economic record, where it purports to say that it is interested in fiscal responsibility. It is no wonder it has increased the debt—the deficit has increased by eight times from what it was. Remember that this government said prior to the election that it would have surpluses every year into the future, but it just gets worse.

How it got here will provide a study for public policy makers and academics in how not to do proper evidence based policy. There was the grand announcement in the 2015 budget that they were going to raise over half a billion by introducing this new backpacker tax in 2015.

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