Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

That was an extraordinary speech from the previous speaker. I wondered for a long time whether he actually had the right speech and if his staff had given him the wrong speech. But right near the end he got to a point where I thought he was actually dealing with the bill.

From a government that has tripled the deficit and increased the debt by more than $100 billion, we get a piece of legislation called the Treasury Laws Amendment (Enterprise Tax Plan) Bill 2016 which is going to give away nearly $50 billion to corporate Australia. It is an extraordinary thing—to put at risk the AAA credit rating while, at the same time, to work as hard as they can to cut funding in terms of pensions, young people and assistance to families. This government seems to be taking away the capacity of battling people who are doing it tough with low wages growth—the lowest on record; about 1.9 per cent growth, and it is backwards in some parts of the economy and some regions—to spend money on goods and services. It is not defending them on penalty rates at all, with 700,000 Australians to lose up to $77 a week. It will not defend them there. It wants to cut pensions and put young people onto youth allowance instead of Newstart and make them wait up to about five weeks before they can get access to Newstart. It is cutting payments in terms of energy supplements for pensioners. This is a government that is determined to put ideology ahead of economic reality.

I spent more than 20 years in private enterprise, building up a business. I know how important small business is. I know the delight on a young person's face when I offered them a job. I know the delight on my business partner's face when we saw we were profitable at the end of the year and had made more money than the previous year. I know how important small business is to my community because it is a battling community and we struggle at times. We are still struggling, I think, in the aftermath of the 2011 and 2013 floods and in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis.

The government, when in opposition, talked about a massive time bomb in debt and a budget emergency that was terrible. They said that we were maxing out the nation's credit card, that debt was spiralling out of control, and that it was a disaster. Those opposite promised a surplus in their first year in office and every year thereafter and have monumentally failed. They gave away billions of dollars in revenue by getting rid of the carbon price and then failed to make any reform to excess—capital gains tax and negative gearing—which their own Treasurer talked about but he was overruled by the cabinet.

From this government, we see a giveaway effectively of $50 billion. I have heard speech after speech from those opposite about how this will be good for jobs and growth. But platitudes and just because you say it does not mean it is actually real. If you look at the analysis done by Treasury, in the long term, a decade or more, you might have seen a 0.1 per cent improvement on employment. The Gonski funding would triple the growth in employment if this government decided to invest in young people and actually supported needs based funding instead of cutting $30 billion out of education and $50 billion out of health funding in their 2014-15 budget—cuts which continue on with Medicare freezes and the like.

This government today put forward this legislation and speaker after speaker said how it was going to be good for small business and how it was a 10-year plan without any reference to any reports, analysis or anything to back up the platitudinous statements they made. But their own Treasurer dropped them in it during question time today. Question after question was put to him about their signature policy, the raison d'etre, the reason for the government, their championship of jobs and growth—remember the corflute's on election day and all throughout the campaign—and whether they would stick to it. Again and again he has refused to commit. So he is leaving those members who have made statements today high and dry.

What does this legislation actually say? What is the purpose of the bill? The purpose of the bill is this: in 2016-17, the company tax rate will be cut from 28.5 per cent to 27 per cent for companies with an aggregate turnover of less than $10 million. That is going to be progressively lifted over the period to 2022-23 with the effect that companies with a turnover of a billion dollars or more per annum—real small businesses there, guys—will be eligible at that time for the lower 27.5 per cent rate. In 2023-24, the threshold will be removed so that all companies will be subject to a 27.5 per cent rate. The general company tax will be reduced from 27.5 per cent to 25 per cent over the period of 2024-25 to 2026-27. And the turnover threshold that applies to determine whether certain small business tax concessions will be available, currently $2 million, will be retained for those applying to certain capital gains tax concessions, to be lifted to $5 million or $10 million or more.

So companies, within 10 years, with a turnover of $1 billion or more—small businesses they believe—will actually get these tax concessions at a time when the government is trying to cut funding for pensioners. They have cut the asset test and increased the taper rate so we have got a situation where pensioners are losing their income. Those opposite are all over the place having done a deal with the Greens on the asset test. They have then launched the attack through the Centrelink automated debt recovery process without any manual review whatsoever and failed to understand the impact of those debt collection letters upon people. We know that at least 20 per cent of those letters are actually wrong. The legal aid society from New South Wales reckon it is about a 37 per cent improvement in overturning decisions when Centrelink actually calculates a debt. So they are in fact more accurate. The government seems to think that there is nothing wrong, nothing to see here but it publicly releases personal information without privacy considerations. This particular government today is actually trying to do this.

The unemployment rate in this country has gone up from 5.7 per cent to 5.9 per cent, much higher than it was during the Global Financial Crisis and the highest in more than 12 months. There were 6,400 fewer jobs last month and a decrease of 33,500 part-time jobs. There are 1.1 million Australians underemployed—wanting more work but unable to find it. This government seems intent on actually giving tax cuts to corporate Australia without any analysis and without any information to back it up. Indeed Treasury analysis says to the contrary, that it will have virtually no impact at all on jobs and growth, which seemed to be the obsession of this government at the last election.

So what they are doing is not actually improving jobs—the unemployment rate is going up—and growth is anaemic. Inequality is at a record high, and these guys are not doing anything about it. They are not addressing it. The legislation before for the chamber today is going to accentuate the challenge we face. They should not be supporting this particular legislation. It is not in the best interests of a fairer Australia and it is not good for business either.

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