Jerome Laxale (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank the member for North Sydney for bringing this motion to this place and acknowledge her upbringing in a small family business, something we share. Recently, my local state member, the member for Epping, resigned—you might have heard of him: Dominic Perrottet. In his valedictory, he quoted some advice he received from former prime minister Paul Keating. Keating said to him:

Dom, I had to teach my bastards to care about money and you need to teach your bastards to care about people.

As we debate this motion today, that is a particularly apt quote to consider.

Keating, as he has the power of doing, encapsulated perfectly in just one simple phrase the balance we must strike in governing, particularly on tax reform. If we pursue tax reform, we have to care about money. But we also have to care about people, because taxation is not just pure economics. It's about ensuring fairness, fostering growth and, above all, supporting the people and businesses that support our nation. Australia has a long history of tax reform and has often been driven by necessity and, at times, by vision, but nearly all reform has been contested.

In the modern era the Hawke-Keating era stands out. In the true Labor way, the introductions of the fringe benefit tax, capital gains tax and dividend imputation system were deliberate steps to ensure that our tax system was fairer, more progressive and more attuned to the realities of a modern economy. Subsequent governments have made their own marks on our tax landscape. The Howard government introduced the GST. Other reforms, such as the Gillard government's mineral resource rent tax and carbon tax, were unfortunately short lived, swiftly dismantled and then not replaced by subsequent governments. How different our country would have been if those important reforms weren't politicised and inevitably repealed.

In just a tick over two years, we have moved forward on tax reform. Apart from our significant reforms to the tax code and income tax, we've introduced a global and domestic minimum tax rate of 15 per cent for large multinationals—many are based in my electorate; that's okay—and changes to the petroleum resource rent tax to ensure offshore LNG companies contribute more sooner. They're good steps, and they're significant. Like all Labor reforms, they are deeply rooted in fairness and equity. Big multinationals should pay their fair share of tax. Our resources sector should contribute more from the profits they make off our national resources, and income tax should contribute less to the national intake than it does at the moment. With every measure I've named, from the past and the present, opposition came from nearly every angle. Tax reform remains a political football for the Left, the Right and those in the middle.

I give this history because I think it's important to illustrate that tax reform in this country is rarely easy or straightforward. It's always contested. Therefore, by definition, it involves tough decisions, political courage and, often, significant and drawn-out debate, yet the politicisation of tax reform has time and time again hampered our nation's ability to create a stable and effective tax system that serves the long-term interests of our society and economy. When tax reform becomes a political football, kicked around for short-term vote harvesting, we all lose.

I speak from personal experience when I say that navigating the challenges of running a small business is difficult. I spent my childhood on the floor of my family's business, and before I came to this place I was juggling that business while also serving as director on a number of boards. My time in the private sector taught me a lot, but if there's one thing I learnt it's that certainty matters—certainty for investors, for directors and for sole traders—because certainty creates growth and uncertainty creates doubt.

The politics of fear and division creates uncertainty. There is no example more current in this parliament than the uncertainty created around energy policy, and we've had similar uncertainty created around tax reform. Delays have real-world impacts, and they impact small business. It would be nice for this parliament to give the electorate some certainty on our big national challenges: fairness, equality, energy, decarbonisation and, of course, tax reform. I join with the member for North Sydney and, I'm sure, millions of Australians who yearn for a parliament that from time to time can achieve consensus, not just perpetual conflict.

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