Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a shame when we come into this place and a person's value or contribution is judged by the amount of time that they spend on their feet talking. Last time I checked, people should be judged on what they say, not on how long they take to say it—but there you go.

Labor is in absolute denial about what happened on 18 May. In relation to the tax policy that Labor took to the last election: Labor took to the last election a breathtakingly ambitious—some would even say courageous—taxation policy, which included things—

An honourable member: That's generous!

I'm a generous kind of guy! It included things such as the abolition of negative gearing, the abolition of the franking dividend credits and the halving of capital gains tax discounts.

Lots of people in this place would know that I'm a builder by trade. The Sunshine Coast has a very strong building industry—you can take the boy out of the Sunshine Coast but you can't take the chippy out of the boy!—and the Sunshine Coast relies very heavily upon the strength of the building industry. One of the most popular things that I saw and experienced during the election campaign was builders and, in fact, anybody dressed in lycra—the sort of people you would normally think might once have voted for Labor—coming up to me in absolute desperation. I had one bloke actually grab me by the shirt, shake me and say: 'You expletives have got to win this election. If you don't, I'm out of a job.' Places like the Sunshine Coast that rely so very heavily upon building and construction were facing an absolute economic Armageddon if that lot, Labor, won the election—$387 billion worth of extra taxes. Builders knew that it would have been their death knell, and they spoke in volumes. That's the difference between us and Labor. We took a policy to the last election that would see very significant tax cuts. They took a policy of increases.

But now the Labor Party wants to rewrite history. In the previous sitting week—I had to check that I was hearing correctly—those opposite were trying to argue that our tax cuts weren't good enough whereas, during the election, they wanted to sting the Australian people with an additional $387 billion in taxes. I thought: 'No, no, no, this can't be right. What I'm hearing can't be right.' How could a party that was pushing $387 billion worth of additional taxes come in, in the first sitting week after the election, and say, 'You're not doing enough'? That, I believe, sums up the Labor Party. It sums up what they believe in. What they believe in will shift and chip and chop and change to whatever they think is going to get them good headlines and, perhaps one day, help them form government. They are without principle. They are without decent policies.

The Australian people spoke in volumes. Hardworking people from the building industry—in particular, anybody dressed in hi-vis—made it very clear to me in my three weeks on pre-poll that they would do anything other than vote for the Labor Party, because of the risk that it was to the national economy. Australians aren't mugs. They'll back a good government every day of the week, and that's what they did on 18 May.

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