Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

For the sake or the benefit of the member, I will withdraw, but I was reflecting on the sentiments of the Australian Labor Party, not on an individual member. I think I have every right to reflect on the sentiment of the Australian Labor Party and their motivating force. When it comes down to it, the Australian Labor Party have a long-term history of selling out Australian workers and selling out their retirement security. That the former member who stood at the dispatch box just then went around the country claiming to people everywhere that there was a justification for their giant $387 billion worth of taxes and a justification for the savings of a million retirees being hit is despicable. It's a despicable act.

I was the chair of the economics committee leading the inquiry that actually raised these issues—which those opposite did not want to hear. Those on the opposition benches kept saying that the only people who were going to be hit were those well off. But families, elderly people and people with a disability came before the committee and told their stories about how Labor would destroy their lives. Their response was to scoff with disinterest and to call it out as a lie. Some of us will never sit by and watch the conduct that they engaged in. For the member for Kingsford-Smith to stand up, to go to that dispatch box and to dismiss it, all when he was the front face, and to actually rationalise it to the Australian people, it was a despicable act then and it's a despicable act now.

This legislation is designed to stop Australian workers being ripped off. Now you'd think the members of the opposition would support it. If they had any integrity or if they had any credibility, they'd support it unamended. But, like every other piece of legislation, we go through the journey of them using it for a political windfall or benefit in the hope that they can claim relevance or obstruct or put hurdles up to its implementation.

The purpose of members on this side is to stand up for Australians. We're the only side of politics today that backs people who stand on their own two feet. We want people to work. We want people to be able to be successful. We want people to be able to provide the nucleus of a family and a community and a home as the foundations for a great country. That's what we stand for. What we despise is the hypocrisy of those who claim that mantle for themselves but only to enrich their own powerbase. I know members don't like for it to be told and to have it exposed, but it's the truth. Look at how fast they will race to defend the collective interests and corporate interests of industry super funds in the way they won't do for workers when they sell out their interest for industrial awards or to oblige people and remove their choice, their freedom and their opportunity by compelling it to go into the control of the people who put them in this place.

The modern Labor Party is not a labour party that reflects the interests of workers. The modern Labor Party is founded today to protect the interests of the accumulation of capital, capital that gives them control, particularly over industry superannuation funds. They scoff because they know that when it's exposed it becomes nakedly obvious to the Australian people that their motivation is not pure. It is not somehow to advance the collective interests. It is a great reminder of the chapter in The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek: it is a reflection of why the worst people get to the top. This is the spirit that sits behind their constant opposition for sensible, pragmatic reform so that money that Australians earn, that they put in their superannuation accounts, sits in their hip pocket at retirement and isn't raided by fees and by unnecessary insurance and isn't sold out to their industrial arrangements to advance the interests of the modern Australian Labor Party. That's why we stand up in this chamber for this legislation. That's why we stand up: because it reflects the type of country that we want to be—one where we encourage people to stand on their own two feet to save and sacrifice for their own retirement security so that they can take care of themselves. I can't think of a better emblem and ideal of the foundation of a country and a successful country than that. When you can't take care of yourself, then you ultimately fall on to the shoulders of others and deny the opportunity that you can turn around to others and help them too. That's the foundation of what we believe on this side of this chamber. You know it and I know it. The problem is the sentiment is not shared on the other side of this chamber. And of course we've also had the shadow minister and the member for Kingsford-Smith go to the dispatch box in this debate and lecture people on this side of the chamber with straw man arguments about the costs of the policies that they rapaciously advance, because, in the end, they don't care about workers' interests. They don't care about workers' savings. In fact, the very policies that they will go and die in a ditch for, which accumulate the wealth and control in the hands of their friends—the RBA, the Treasury, the Grattan Institute and so many other groups—lower the incomes of Australians today. They scoff at that proposition, because of the economic illiteracy and disinterest of the workers who they claim to represent.

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