Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business (House)) Share this | Hansard source

They say it's been a disincentive. So what's the ultimate incentive? The ultimate incentive, from their end, is to abolish all taxation. There is a bit of a problem with that. The first problem—

Government members interjecting—

You then make a choice. Do you abolish all the services that it was going to fund, or do you just let debt go all the way up? What's the government's answer to that? They have found a way to do both. Remember all the talk of debt and deficit before they came to office? Remember that they voted to abolish the debt cap? And where has that got us? Half a trillion dollars in gross debt. And now they have found a way to add an extra half a trillion dollars to it every two years. The level of incompetence from this Treasurer was marked from the time he got the job. When he got the job, he brought in a $107 million hole in legislation. He has been coming into this place without a shred of anything other than anger. Who needs argument, who needs rationality, when you can get really cranky? Who needs to put any sort of rational argument together when you have that one mode? Turn the switch, and then it is anger.

What doesn't come over on the microphone when people watch question time at home—we feel for them, but there are some people who do it!—is all the interjections when the Treasurer gets up. They say, 'Mate, why don't you use anger this time? Why don't you get a little bit cranky this time?'—because that's the only mode he's got. The evidence is that he believes in getting debt and deficit higher than the nation has ever seen before. If he wants to do something about bracket creep, the answer he has come up with is not just to abolish one bracket but to abolish the lot.

When you outsource your economic policy to Pauline Hanson's One Nation, be careful what you wish for. What happened last night is no accident. One Nation would have thought it was terrific, and the Liberal and National parties would have thought it's now just what they do. The way they have behaved this term has changed fundamentally since One Nation returned to the federal parliament. Before One Nation was in the parliament, can we remember a minister for immigration saying it was a mistake to let people into this country based on their race and religion? Once One Nation were here, that happened. Before the election, did we hear anything from those opposite about needing a university-level English test for citizenship? No. But One Nation arrived and, all of a sudden, that happened too. And last night we saw that it is not just their immigration policies; it is not just their citizenship policies: the government have now gone the full way and are adopting the economic policies of the One Nation party.

Those opposite can be really proud, because no other government has managed to achieve what they have achieved. We are half a trillion dollars in debt now and another half a trillion dollars of gross debt will be added every two years. If we are worried about going too hard on the top end of town, they fixed that last night. It doesn't matter how much you earn; what they voted for last night is not one cent of income tax from 1 July 2024.

Labor stood up in the Senate and moved a consequential amendment to fix this. We thought: it is probably reasonable that income tax exists; it is probably not an outrageous position! But what did they do? They said, 'We know what Labor's up to!' Immediately upon hearing that, they said: 'Quick, Senator Hanson. We're with you. We'll stop them. We'll make sure income tax doesn't continue beyond 2024'—and they voted to prevent it. So that was what we had in front of the parliament. Procedurally the government did everything they could to try to make sure this wasn't revealed when their own backbench was present. They went to lengths I haven't seen in the parliament before to make sure that people were unaware of what bill had reached this House. The bill that had reached this House was Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party to a T. It was a policy, before this House only minutes ago, that abolished all income tax revenue; that set the rate at zero; that added half a trillion dollars to debt every two years. I wish we had a Treasurer who at least had the courage to acknowledge that what happened in the Senate last night was a little bit silly—but no. No, he will respond in the only way he knows. Beware the anger, because there is no-one running the economy.

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