Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's actually quite amusing to hear members from the Sunshine Coast refer to the Sunshine Coast as if it's the whole of Australia. Are we still surprised at all that the Sunshine Coast votes Liberal National Party? They have for a very long time. We're talking about some of the safest seats in the country. Let's just remind all of those in this place that the government only won by one seat—77 seats. That is not a massive mandate. They do not have a mandate in the Bendigo electorate on these tax cuts. They do not have a mandate in a lot of seats when it comes to the tax cuts.

Let's also just remind people about the broken promise. If you want to talk about headlines, there have been some headlines about these tax cuts that were pretty damning of the Prime Minister: 'Magician Scott Morrison's smoke and mirrors act on tax cuts'. He admits that he knew before the election he couldn't actually get them passed by 1 July. But let's just recall what he said before the election, after the budget, and during the election: that the $1,080 tax cuts could be paid administratively by the tax office even before the legislation had passed, an option the Morrison government later admitted wasn't possible. It is a broken promise. It's hard to believe that this government has got away with breaking a promise on these tax cuts. They told the Australian people in their election campaign it would be done before 1 July, yet they didn't recall parliament. It was practically impossible with how the writs were going to be issued, yet before the election the Prime Minister misled the Australian people on multiple occasions. The candidates misled the Australian people on multiple occasions. Their MPs misled the Australian people on multiple occasions. It couldn't be done. We offered to bring back parliament early so it could be done, but they denied it—broken promise No. 1.

Let's talk about the three stages of these tax cuts and who will really benefit. As the member for Franklin said, there are lots of people earning less than $40,000 who are shocked that they're not going to get the full benefit of $1,080. In my electorate, they did a little vox pop on WIN News and went around and asked, and all these young people said, 'Great.' They were looking forward to their $1000. Only after WIN said, 'How much do you earn a year?' and they responded, 'Oh, about $30,000 or $35,000,' did they hear, 'You're not going to get the full thousand dollars.' This government has misled people on who will benefit from this. There are lots of people, not just in Tasmania but all over regional Australia, who will not benefit the most from this package that has been passed.

That's where I get to stage 3. Stage 3 predominantly supports the very wealthy in this country. They are not people living in rural and regional Australia. In my own electorate of Bendigo, which is like a lot of regional electorates, average income is about $50,000. It is slightly higher than some of our other electorates, like Nicholls to the north. But in my electorate roughly 1.3 per cent of people earned over $180,000 in the tax year 2015-16. That is not a lot of people. About 1000 people will benefit from stage 3. Let's really take that in for a moment. Stage 3 of the tax plan that was passed will benefit really high-income earners who live in metro areas or are in some specific industries. It will not flow through to the rest of the taxpayers in our country. The smoke and mirrors campaign of this government and this Prime Minister continues.

Then the question is: how will they pay for stage 3? None of the government speakers spoke about what they're going to cut from the federal budget to pay for stage 3, which will cost the budget $95 billion by the end of the 2020s, or almost $20 billion a year. That's roughly twice what we spend on Newstart. Are we going to kick everyone off Newstart? Is that what the government's proposing? It's also twice what we spend on child care. Are the government proposing to slash all subsidies when it comes to child care? To this day they're boasting about stage 3 and what they're delivering, but what they haven't outlined is what they're going to cut from the budget to pay for it. Are they going to cut funding to aged care? Are they going to cut funding to the pension? To withdraw that amount of money from the budget, the government has to come clean on who they're going to cut, with less boasting and more honesty.

See this speech in context