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

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The current Prime Minister knifed the member for Warringah because, he said, we were not getting the economic leadership that Australia needed. What we have is a continual failure of economic leadership from this Prime Minister and his Treasurer. This will be the current Treasurer's second budget. The last one had a one-point plan for jobs and growth, and we saw last week the spectacle of us asking the current Treasurer whether the centrepiece of the 2016 budget would even be in the 2017 budget. We asked 12 times, and we did not get an answer about this one-point plan for jobs and growth. It was embarrassing. Then we had the Prime Minister leaving the Treasurer hanging out to dry all week and then briefing the papers that it would be in the budget. It just goes to show why the Prime Minister is out there saying he is going to take over the economic management and the salesmanship from his Treasurer.

We should not be surprised because—there have been so many of these promises it is sometimes easy to miss one—this is what the Treasurer has done over the course of the last 18 months: he promised an increase in the GST and then retreated from it in that famous 46-minute waffle at the National Press Club; he promised big, swingeing personal income tax cuts and he told us how passionate he was about personal income tax cuts, and what has followed has been very little indeed; he went with his Prime Minister on a 48-hour frolic through the fields of state income taxes and withdrew all funding from public schools in Australia; he talked about the excesses of negative gearing before being rolled by the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection in cabinet; and he has loved to criticise tax increases and tax changes proposed by us, that is until he adopts them. He criticises them right up until the day that he adopts them.

This Treasurer, even today, was talking about how we should not have more tax rises. He said that he opposed Labor's proposed increase in the tobacco excise and he railed against changes to superannuation tax, and then he got up and announced those very things in his last budget. Goodness knows what he is going to announce in this budget! Of course, this is the Treasurer who personally came up with the masterstroke of linking his unfair, unsustainable cuts not only to the National Disability Insurance Scheme but also to his childcare package. That was his baby all the way through.

Of course, the Treasurer has his one-point plan. He says that that is his answer for increasing growth and jobs. That is his one-point plan. Of course the fine print, which he does not like talking about, tells us that this will deliver one per cent growth in the economy in 20 years time. In terms of wages, he was saying yesterday not to worry about the penalty rate cuts because the corporate tax cut is going to increase wages, apparently. What do the government's documents tell us? They tell us that it will increase wages—by $2 a day in 20 years time. There has never been a more exciting time to be an Australian! They will cut your penalty rates and give you $2 a day back in 20 years time! That is the great plan for the future that this government delivers us. What an exciting proposition for the Australian people—a big wage cut now, big business gets a big tax cut and you get your penalty rates cut!

We saw yesterday the big four banks' economists talking about the corporate tax cut. To be clear, these are the banks who get the tax cut. These are supporters of the tax cut. The opening paragraph of the story said:

Chief economists at Australia’s biggest banks have questioned the overall benefit to the economy provided by a cut to the corporate tax rate, at a time when the country’s biggest companies sit on record high levels of cash and continue to spend billions buying their own shares.

These are the people who support the tax cut. These are the ones who get the tax cut, and you cannot even convince them that it is good for the economy. No wonder the Prime Minister wants to take over economic salesmanship from the Treasurer. We are seeing Peter Costello and Paul Keating say that this is the wrong plan for Australia. Anything that can unite those two must be a very bad idea, especially if they agree that this is a wrong plan for Australia!

Of course, the most important thing is that this $50 billion just cannot be afforded at this time because of the deficits and the debt blowouts which this Prime Minister, this Treasurer and their two predecessors have presided over. This government's budget disaster has seen the 2016-17 budget deficit go from $11 billion—forecast by them—to $37 billion. Of course, we have seen net debt forecasts increase by $100 billion. This is a Prime Minister who said that net debt at $188 billion was a colossal figure. I wonder what it is under his watch. How would he describe it under his watch when he said previously that such a figure was 'colossal'?

This really leads us back, again, to a Treasurer who is constantly out of his depth and is not up to running a G20 economy. This Treasurer is at war with his Prime Minister and at war with his Minister for Finance. Goodness knows the Australian people have every right to be concerned about what will be in this 2017 budget. Everything he promises he fails to deliver on. We know he is barely on speaking terms with his own Prime Minister.

There was another resounding vote of confidence in the Treasurer just this week. We see every day in question time that those on the backbench go wild every time the Treasurer is up on his feet. They just cannot control themselves. The backbench go crazy when the Treasurer brings in his pet rock—they just go off! They just go crazy. We saw some extra support from a frontbench colleague of the Treasurer with a ringing endorsement. He did not name the frontbench colleague, in fairness. I do not wonder why when he or she said of the Treasurer, 'He'll need to perform or he's out.' What a ringing endorsement from his cabinet colleagues!

Well, I agree with the said unnamed frontbencher from the other side. But I probably have a different view about what a better performance looks like. I will share it with the House. I would think a more believable plan to return to surplus based on believable policies would be a better performance, not discredited, unfair cuts. It would involve proper budget repair instead of attacking the most vulnerable in our economy. It would involve proper tax reform, such as negative gearing and capital gains tax reform. That would be a better performance from this Treasurer. How about a housing affordability plan? That would be a better performance. The Treasurer should not be replaced now; he should be replaced at the next election by a Labor government with a plan and the courage to tackle the issues facing Australia's future. (Time expired)

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