Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to follow the member for Makin and to support his remarks in relation to the devastating impact that the closure of the car industry will have, particularly on the livelihoods of individuals and families in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. It's going to be a very, very hard time. How this government can continue to ignore the needs of people in this part of Adelaide absolutely astounds me. They should hang their heads in shame.

If you were looking for a piece of legislation that really summed up the approach of the conservatives, you'd have to say that this legislation that we're debating here tonight sums it up. This really is it. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Enterprise Tax Plan No. 2) Bill 2017 really displays all the twisted priorities of this government: trickle-down economics writ large, tax cuts for multinationals and big business, a $65 billion tax cut for big business. I might remind the government, who like to go on about the size of the deficit—or, anyway, they used to —that this $65 billion tax cut for big business is, of course, totally and completely unfunded.

This conservative government thinks that big multinational corporations pay too much tax. That's their view. But they also think that ordinary Australian workers—like the people the member for Makin was just talking about—earning less than $87,000 a year should pay more tax. These are the priorities of those opposite—that multinational corporations and the banks should pay less tax and low-income workers should pay more tax. That sums up this Liberal-National Party government. At the same time, we have low-income workers who work on the weekends who are going to have their penalty rates cut. This government has done nothing to stop that happening. How on earth can that be fair? How can it be fair that big companies in this country get a tax cut, low-income workers get a tax increase and a whole lot of other people who have to work on the weekends lose their penalty rates? If you are a big business, you will get a tax cut. It is one rule for the rich and powerful in this country and, of course, a very, very different rule for low-income workers.

More than anything else, it really does demonstrate just how out of touch this Prime Minister is. It also shows the rank hypocrisy of this government when it comes to budget repair. We get lectured every day by the Treasurer about the need for budget repair. It started when they came into government a few years ago. They said that we had a budget emergency. You never hear that anymore because, of course, under their watch the deficit has blown out. One of the reasons it's blowing out is they want to spend $65 billion on a huge tax cut to big business. We will not support this part of the government's $65 billion tax cut. We don't think it's fair. We actually think that big business and the banks need to pay their fair share of tax.

I just want to remind everyone about an incident in question time earlier in the year that really demonstrated how much this government wanted to hide the cost of this tax cut. People on the Labor side will of course remember this, and I suspect the Treasurer will too, because it was very embarrassing. We asked a simple question of the Prime Minister: what is the cost of the full company tax rate plan? You might remember that we got a whole range of answers that day. First it was $24 billion. Then it was $26 billion. Then it was $50 billion. When asked again to confirm it, the Prime Minister flicked it to the Treasurer—a hospital handpass if ever I've seen one. At first, the Treasurer said it was $36½ billion. Then, a little later in question time, he'd obviously thought better of that answer and came back and said $65.4 billion. In the space of question time, the company tax cuts had gotten more expensive, to the tune of $15 billion. What a farce. Honestly, you wouldn't trust this lot opposite with a $20 note. Let's be very, very clear: all the evidence from the last three decades, during which it has been implemented by conservative governments across the world, is that trickle-down economics doesn't work. Trickle-down economics has been a failure.

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