Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister to the Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I want to address a few of the issues raised by my good friends the member for Dunkley and the member for Barker, and I'll also address, immediately, some of the comments from the member for Fenner. It's very interesting in this place to see when people have a bit of a guilty conscience. Clearly, the member for Fenner and the Labor Party have a very, very guilty conscience as it relates to multinational tax avoidance. We all remember that very extraordinary night and those extraordinary scenes in the parliament in 2015 when economic responsibility in supporting our multinational tax avoidance changes came from the Greens of all people, who supported the government's package, with only the Labor Party voting against it.

What have we seen since then? We have seen literally billions of additional dollars being caught within the Australian tax net as a result of those multinational anti-avoidance laws, the diverted profits tax and others, which are ensuring that every single company that does business in this country pays an appropriate share of tax. The Labor Party voted against it. It's on the record, it's on video, it's in Hansardit is clear to the world that they voted against these changes, which have seen billions of additional dollars caught in our Australian tax net.

The member for Dunkley is absolutely correct in his observations around our superannuation package. The government is empowering the ATO to reunite people's lost, low or inactive accounts with their active super accounts. We're capping certain fees to ensure that you don't have your balance eroded by never-ending fees and insurances. We're banning all exit fees on accounts, because we think it's your money and you should be able, if you choose, to transfer those amounts. We're also ensuring that insurance is fit for purpose. No longer will people, particularly young people, with small balances be paying for insurance they don't need. The member for Dunkley also referred to the retirees tax. It will be clear to all that Labor's retirees tax is absent from this appropriation bill, and we will fight them every day until the next election to make sure that hardworking Australians who have been law-abiding, who have paid taxes their whole life, who might have a modest amount of assets, including Australian shares which pay a franked dividend, are not going to have up to a quarter of their income taken away by the Labor Party.

The member for Barker referred to Labor's $220 billion of new taxes. It's very interesting. For two years we saw the Leader of the Opposition, the shadow Treasurer and the member for Fenner running around the country talking about how they were going after these very, very nasty millionaires and billionaires and large multinational corporates—the Apples and Googles of the world—and they were very hairy-chested about it. Now what do we see? We see that the two largest measures of their $220 billion of additional taxes are not going after those supposed terrible rich people; they're going after the most vulnerable in our society. They're going after retirees. The biggest single contributor to their cash splash is a raid on the savings of retirees with their retirees tax. Further, they're going after small and family businesses with a range of additional taxes including, presumably—although it is very unclear—reversing our tax cuts for small and medium businesses. Instead of going after the so-called top end of town that we've heard about incessantly from these class warfare warriors, the two groups who, in the end, are going to fund Labor's uncontrolled spending around the country are retirees on low incomes, retirees and in many cases pensioners with a self-managed super fund—so pensioners and retirees—and also small family businesses. No longer will this faux class warfare campaign work when we know the people they're going after—the people who are funding the proposed reckless spending of those opposite—are people who are working hard, who are by no means wealthy, who need every dollar they can get and who shouldn't be the ones that the Labor Party go after just because they're an easy target, just because they don't have a strong voice. I say to the member for Barker: that is absent from this appropriation bill and we will fight the Labor Party each and every day until the next election on the retirees tax.

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