James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

then, absolutely, any policy promise or policy commitment will change.

Those opposite are also running two contrary arguments in the contributions that are being made, and some of them are making the same contradictory arguments in the same speech. On the one hand, apparently the circumstances have changed and it's because of the economic situation since the last election that they couldn't have possibly predicted what led them to need to change their position on an ironclad election promise and increase taxes on some Australians to cut taxes on other Australians. That's one argument. But then some of the very same speakers are saying in their same contributions that the policy they had was never the right policy in the first place. To be honest, I think we all know what the truth is, and it's the latter.

I do believe government members that are now coming clean in this debate and saying they never supported the stage 3 tax cuts in the first place. To be fair, that seems quite credible. What it also does is magnify the extent of the fraud, because we now have members of the government owning up to the fact that this was their secret plan all along. They could have gone to the last election and said, 'It is not the position of the Labor Party that income tax rates that were legislated by the previous government are what we support, and, if we were elected, we will change them.'

We got all sorts of contributions about why, apparently, the changes that are being made are so sensible, are going to benefit so many people and are going to be so popular. So it is miraculous that they didn't want to campaign on this in a recent election, and that says something about just how much they believe some of the lines that they're using in this debate. I actually think that the Australian people will say, 'What we've learnt about them, what we've learnt about the Labor Party, is that, whatever they say in an election campaign and whatever commitments and promises they make, we now know that they will all be junked, using any excuse they like after, and if, they're re-elected.'

That's why we know that all sorts of things that they won't talk about before the election are suddenly going to be on the table if they get re-elected. That's why they're using the same sorts of weasel words on negative gearing. They're jacking up superannuation tax already, but that's the tip of the iceberg. The Assistant Treasurer described superannuation as the 'honey pot', and I see that we've got some legislation coming into the parliament to increase super tax. This is where earnings on balances of over $3 million will attract a higher tax rate. But I hear that, regrettably, it won't apply to politicians on the defined benefit superannuation scheme. My understanding from my briefing on that legislation is that, regrettably, the Prime Minister's superannuation won't be affected by the higher rate of taxation that other people with super worth more than $3 million—which is what the superannuation of someone in the Prime Minister's position would be worth, if you could value it—in a lump sum rather than a defined benefit will have to pay. He's very good at raising taxes on other people, but unfortunately he just missed out on applying that same standard to his own superannuation. It is absolutely pathetic. We have a Prime Minister that will ratchet up taxes on everyone else's super but not on his own. That's what Australians know about this Prime Minister, and the legislation before us—

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