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

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Major Bank Levy Bill, also known as the bank tax, and not just to offer the support of this side of the House for the bill in principle but also to talk about some of the things which are concerning when it comes to the way the government has gone about devising and trying to implement this bill.

We make it clear from the outset that we support the cognate bills; we support the measure. But our job on this side of the House is to hold the government to account on the implementation of the policy, and there are a range of reasons why we are a bit concerned about the way the government has gone about what should be a good initiative. Given the state of the budget, the state of the books, we should be looking for ways to repair the budget in a way that does not ask the most vulnerable people to carry the can, but there are still concerns about how the government has gone about implementing this bank tax.

The banks themselves have claimed that there is something like a $2 billion hole in the government's costings. Obviously that would be a very troubling development if it were true. We have sought assurance from the government that that is not the case, but unfortunately the Treasurer's answers have made us more worried about the costing of this initiative rather than less worried. That is not an uncommon thing when it comes to the Treasurer, but it remains the case that we have been given no confidence that the costing of the bank tax is appropriate and is right.

We have also been given no assurance around the passing of the bank tax on to consumers. Those opposite say they have funded the ACCC to do that task, but it has been funded for only a year—I think $1 million in total—which is insufficient to do that important policing task. The banks themselves say they will pass it on, and nobody on that side of the House has given the people I represent, the people we represent, the assurance they need that this will not be just another pressure on household budgets. Another concern: unfortunately in the comments by the member for Mallee I thought there was a bit of a sense that this somehow excuses those opposite for the protection racket they are running on the royal commission we should have into our financial system, to get to the bottom of some of this injustice and poor treatment of customers. We need to get to the bottom of it so we can have confidence in our system, which is otherwise strong but has fallen down badly when it comes to the treatment of ordinary Australians in this country.

The fourth main thing that concerns us about the bank tax is that at the same time as they want a pat on the back and want this kudos for instituting a bank levy they are giving something like $10 billion out of the $65 billion company tax to just four companies—the four big banks. They want us to say, 'Oh, well done; you're taxing the big banks and recognising their power in the market by instituting a bank levy,' but at the same time they are giving them, with the other hand, something like $10 billion over the medium term. It is pretty extraordinary to think that almost a sixth of that really big company tax cut will go to just four companies, and they will be the four big banks.

So I think what we have seen here is a rushed policy. I think what happened was that it got quite late in the budget process and the government had run out of options, so they put this on the table. They had not done enough of the thinking or enough of the work to make sure they got it right—again. Unfortunately, that is a characteristic of this Treasurer in particular but indeed of the whole government. That is why we on this side call the Treasurer 'Butterfingers'.

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