Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the amendments to the Treasury Laws Amendment (Enterprise Tax Plan) Bill 2016.

The government's $50 billion handout to multinational corporations and the big banks says more about them and more about their budget than all of the spin, all of the glossy documents, all the political patch-ups, all the pre-rehearsed lines and all the market-tested slogans like 'fairness and opportunity and security' that we heard from the Treasurer this morning in that embarrassing doorstop interview out the front of this building.

As some of us were listening to him, we started to think, 'Where did he all of a sudden get this conversion? Where did he get this idea that, all of a sudden, fairness and security and opportunity were important things for people to aspire to in this country?' I remembered this article from April in The Daily Telegraph by Sharri Markson. It said:

The Daily Telegraph has learned the Liberal Party commissioned research firm Crosby Textor to help Mr Morrison formulate his second Budget, at a cost of more than $200,000.

An opposition member: Two hundred thousand!

Two hundred thousand dollars. When I thought about that, I thought, 'No wonder the budget's in so much trouble.' This is a Treasurer who spends $66,666.67 per word on a three-word slogan. It cost him $200,000 at Crosby Textor to learn, all of a sudden, to his great surprise, that people care about fairness and security and opportunity. This is a guy who learns about fairness from a focus group. On this side of the House, we do not need a focus group to know about fairness; we are here because we believe in fairness—it is the reason why we are here. You do not need a focus group to learn about fairness; you need a heart, and that is what is missing on that side of the House.

The government are on about these things today because the focus group told them to be on about them today, after they dropped $200,000 on that cynical political patch-up. That is why they are pretending now to care about Medicare and pretending to care about our schools. They are trying to distract from these big increases to the cost of living and all the rest of it. They have the nerve to talk about fairness when they want to take money from students in this country to fund a $50 billion tax cut. They talk about security when job security in this country has never been worse when it comes to underemployment and wage security—things like penalty rates. They talk about opportunity at the same time as they want to close off access, for kids from areas like mine and so many that we represent on this side, to university and to getting a decent start at school. For as long as this $50 billion tax cut is in their budget, for as long as it is their one-point plan, it will be the symbol of a government who shower largesse on the top end of town at the expense of people who work and people who struggle in this country.

We will get an update of the numbers tonight. All will be revealed in the next few hours. But we know enough about it and we know enough about them to know that it will be another shambles. It will be another shambles from an arrogant and out-of-touch Prime Minister and a divided and dysfunctional government. Theirs is a record that they want to run from, but they cannot hide. They have been asking for some years now—and this will continue tonight—the most vulnerable people in this country to carry the can for their budget failures, and that is why, no matter what they try and fix up and patch up tonight, we will still have the attacks on health and education and family living standards in this country.

The Treasurer has tried as well, in his typically and characteristically ham-fisted way, to redefine debt to hide from the fact that debt and deficit—this might be news to the Minister for Small Business—have blown out substantially under those opposite. You think of the deficit for this year alone. It was about $11 billion in their first budget; it is now about $37 billion—it has more than tripled on their watch. When you think about net debt, there has been a blowout in net debt for this year of about $100 billion. You think about gross debt. Gross debt is about to crash through half a trillion dollars in this country. And they wonder why the AAA credit rating is at such serious risk.

This tax cut is not about growth; it is about trickle-down economics at its worst, paid for by families and paid for by students. That is why everybody on this side of the House will oppose this tax cut, this corporate largesse, on behalf of people who work and people who struggle, who do not get a look-in from this government and will not get a look-in tonight.

See this speech in context