Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

Just before Christmas I received an email from a constituent, a bloke in his 50s, who needs both of his hips replaced as he's in quite a bit of pain. He was told by the local hospital that the hip replacement would take place in June last year. He's still waiting. Because of the Abbott and Turnbull government's cuts to hospital funding and because of the freeze to the Medicare rebate, the hospital system in Australia is under massive pressure, and people like this bloke who wrote to me are suffering.

Australian families are suffering. They feel that they're losing the cost-of-living battle. Electricity prices have doubled since this government came to office. Health insurance premiums just keep going up and up every year. The cost of child care has risen recently. As for housing, rents and house prices in the electorate I represent, they are astronomical. Under this government 330,000 pensioners have had a cut to their age pension. The government is now trying to axe the energy supplement, which was put in place to help those pensioners get through this difficult period when electricity prices keep increasing. The costs of goods and services are rising, yet wages aren't keeping pace. Annual wage growth has been stuck at two per cent, stubbornly, for the last few years. That's why families and pensioners are falling behind. Incomes aren't keeping pace with the cost of living.

If you're an Australian business, it's a very different story—particularly if you're a large corporation, for whom profits have been increasing handsomely over the course of the last two years. In fact, if you look at the share of economic growth and income in our country, you will see the profits share of GDP over the course of the last two years has increased by two per cent, while the wages share—the workers' share—has decreased by two per cent. Corporate profits are up; real wages are down. What is the Turnbull government doing as a result of that? Well, it's increasing taxes for workers and families throughout the country, by increasing the Medicare levy by half a per cent. That will put more pressure on household budgets.

But what is the government doing for large corporations? They're, of course, getting a tax cut! This is despite the fact that the most recent disclosure from the Australian Taxation Office of the 2,000 largest Australian corporations indicates that 732 of them—or 36 per cent—pay absolutely no tax at all! One of them earned $16 billion from its Australian operations and paid zero tax in Australia! The Turnbull government believes that these corporations deserve a tax cut and that Australian workers should pay more!

The other issue is: who benefits from this company tax cut? It's overwhelmingly foreigners. Because of the operation of dividend imputation and Australian domestic shareholders paying tax through their company and receiving a franking credit for that, it's foreigners who get the biggest benefit from this corporate tax cut. So there we have it! With a $23.6 billion budget deficit, with the Abbott and Turnbull government cutting services to hospitals, to schools and to universities, with the government cutting investment in infrastructure, and with foreigners getting an advantage through tax cuts, what is this government doing? It is making life harder for families, pensioners, for workers while giving corporations and big business a tax cut. No wonder 46 per cent of Australians disapprove of this tax corporate tax cut planned by the Turnbull government. Only 24 per cent approve, while 46 per cent disapprove! It is foreigners who are getting the big benefits from these tax cuts. Australian workers are going to pay for the tax cuts, which are going to end up in the pockets of foreigners and give them a big advantage. It's no wonder people like the gentleman who emailed me about his hip pain and the fact that he can't get a hip replacement and the average Australian worker and their family are struggling to get by. The average pensioner is struggling to put the heater on in winter or the air-conditioning on in summer because they can't afford to pay the electricity bill. They aren't too happy with the Turnbull government and aren't too overjoyed by the fact that this government is going to give a massive tax break to large corporations at the expense of Australian workers.

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