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

Just before the budget was delivered, the Treasurer held a press conference in his normal style, full of bluff and bravado, and said that all Australians would pay more tax under the Labor Party. He kept saying it. 'You will pay more,' he said. 'You will pay more under Labor.' In fact, Labor is proposing bigger tax cuts than the government for 10 million Australians. That's the fact of the matter that this government perhaps didn't predict and didn't see coming, but it is a fact of life. In this legislation, at the consideration in detail stage, I will be moving amendments which enable the Treasurer and all members opposite, if they choose to, to vote for tax cuts that are bigger than those in the budget, or they can choose to vote against bigger tax cuts for 10 Australians. The choice is theirs, but they will have the opportunity to do so.

The bill introduces a tax cut scheme which is in three tranches and, likewise, I'll deal with the bill sequentially. Firstly, regarding tax relief on 1 July 2018, as I made clear on budget night in the very first post-budget statements that I made on behalf of the Labor Party, we support the 2018 tax cuts. They should be implemented. The government could pass this legislation through this House today and, as soon as the Senate resumes, could pass it through the other place with our full support. The Greens don't support it; that's a matter for them. But the Labor Party, the National Party and the Liberal Party voting together would give you the numbers in both houses. It can be done. But, to do that, the government should split this bill. It should split it in this House, and it should also split it in the Senate and allow the parliament to take a detailed and considered position on each of the three tranches.

As I said, we are also proposing better and bigger tax cuts in 2019. When the Labor Party comes to office, should we win the next election, everyone earning less than $125,000 will receive a bigger tax cut under Labor's plans—for many of those people, the tax cuts are almost double those being proposed by the government. A teacher on $65,000 a year would receive a tax cut of $982 a year under Labor. A couple earning $90,000 and $50,000 respectively would receive a bigger tax cut than that which the government is proposing. We, on this side of the House, are able to do this, as well as commit to bigger surpluses than the government has projected over the forward estimates from the election in the 2018 budget. We are able to do this because of the big, difficult but well-calibrated decisions this side of the House has been prepared to make for several years, enabling us to deliver bigger surpluses as well as bigger, fairer and better tax cuts.

The government says: 'Maybe the Labor Party's tax cuts are bigger, that might be true, but you can't believe that they'll implement them.' Well, we are prepared to have the House vote on it and we will be voting for those tax cuts in this parliament, in this chamber. If the government's so concerned to ensure that they're implemented, make them the law! We're happy to make them the law. That's our position. The government will vote against those tax cuts, I predict. They might surprise me, but I predict they'll vote against those tax cuts—because they don't actually believe in them. They don't believe in better tax cuts for people on low and middle incomes.

Of course, the government is also proposing further tax cuts in 2022 and 2024. So ordinary are the tax cuts that the government is delivering in 2018 that they are determined to change the focus to 2022 and 2024. All knowing, omnipotent, the government—knowing what the financial situation will be like in 2022, knowing what it will be like economically around the world and in Australia in 2024—says this can be afforded. Normally a parliament votes on things which occur during the course of the parliament. The government wants us to vote on the first day after the budget, to just tick and flick very big tax cuts in 2022 and 2024—because they know exactly what they think they can deliver in those years. I wonder what their track record is on consistency when it comes to tax, five or seven years out. Well, it was just last year that the Treasurer stood at the dispatch box and said all Australians earning more than $21,000 should pay more in income tax. We were told we were irresponsible, obstructionist and even un-Australian—because we wouldn't just immediately agree with that. Now, 12 months later, we're told that everything has changed and we don't need that tax rise—we now need tax cuts. And we're expected to believe that these guys know what they can deliver in 2022 and 2024!

Their other big priority, corporate tax cuts, hit a stumble block. But I will give the government due credit. That's their big priority—at least $80 billion worth of corporate tax cuts. That's the big line in the sand for them, their No. 1 issue. Well, it wasn't that long ago that members opposite were proposing an increase in corporate tax. Some members might have forgotten this. They went to the 2013 election proposing to increase the tax on large corporations to pay for the member for Warringah's paid parental leave scheme. That's what they were doing. They told us: 'We know what's right for Australia. We're going to increase corporate tax to pay for the member for Warringah's pet project.' So just five years ago they said their No. 1 priority was increasing corporate tax, and now their No. 1 priority is reducing corporate tax. But we're meant to believe that they know what they'll think in 2024!

Mr Hawke interjecting—

I'll give the member for Mitchell credit. He opposed that corporate tax rise. It probably did his career development no good at that particular point! But it is probably an investment which paid off for him in the longer term. We'll give him that. At least he stood up for that. But he remembers it very well. He remembers that he was bound by the solidarity of the Liberal Party to support an increase in corporate tax. He had to argue for it in the public sphere even though he argued against it privately. Does the honourable member for Mitchell really expect us to believe that he, who argued against the corporate tax rise in 2013, is now for the corporate tax cut and his colleagues will be able to stick to the plan for seven years? This is a government which can't stick to a plan for seven minutes! We had state income taxes—that didn't last a news cycle!

The Prime Minister had an answer to all Australia's problems. He was going to withdraw all Commonwealth funding from public schools—keep it for private schools but withdraw completely all Commonwealth funding for public schools—and give states the power to levy income tax. That was a particularly dumb idea but he dropped it the next day. The Australian people, unsurprisingly, said, 'No, thank you.' That's the consistency. They can't keep a plan from one day to the next but we're meant to believe that they know what they'll do in 2024.

The Australian people know a con job when they see it—particularly as this Treasurer has been so shifty when it comes to matters of costings and the impact on the budget. We've seen it day after day after day in question time. They're pretty simple questions. They're not trick questions. We can do trick questions from time to time, I do confess. Sometimes we'll ask a particularly clever question. These are just straight questions: what's the cost? Some members would remember: 'Tell them the price, son.' Well, tell them the price of the tax cuts. Tell them the price, son, of the tax cuts year by year. Why is it so important to know the cost year by year? The Treasurer says, 'I've told you over four years, I've told you over 10 years. That's all you need to know. Just vote for it.' That's his position: 'Just vote for it. Put the blindfold on. Trust me. Just vote for it.' The reason that the year-on-year data is so important is precisely because the Treasurer has designed these tax cuts in three tranches, so we need to know the impact of each tranche. That's what we're voting on. We, by and large, know the impact of the 2018 tranches. That's pretty clear, by and large, but the comparative impact by the end of the process, when this scheme is fully implemented, of what each tranche has cost the Australian people is not clear. It's not clear at all. We do not know because the Treasurer will not tell us.

I give the Treasurer this: he's not so incompetent that he does not know. He does know the answer; he just won't tell us. That's probably even worse than not knowing. To know the answer and to refuse to reveal it to the parliament, in sustained questioning from this side of the House, shows that they have something to hide. It is particularly disappointing that the Treasurer just says, 'Vote for it. We won't tell you what it costs and, also, we won't tell you the impact.' There used to be good graphs in the budget paper, honourable members will recall. The distributional impact and the impact of government decisions on families at different income levels. It used to be there for all to see: what do the government decisions mean for families at this income and that income? It disappeared. I don't think it was a savings measure. I don't think it was designed to save Treasury resources—

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