Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let me begin with a quote:

It is an absolute principle of democracy that governments should not and must not say one thing before an election and do the opposite afterwards. Nothing could be more calculated to bring our democracy into disrepute and alienate the citizenry of Australia from their government than if governments were to establish by precedent that they could say one thing before an election and do the opposite afterwards.

I wonder who might have said that? Could it be a member of this side of the House?

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Bob Hawke?

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Perhaps it could be Bob Hawke, the member for Herbert helpfully suggests. Bob Hawke was indeed good at keeping his promises; something which, I am afraid, cannot be said for this Prime Minister or this government. Those words were uttered on 22 August 2011 as part of a litany of statements by the member for Warringah in the lead-up to the last election. He made statements such as, 'We want taxes going down, not going up.' And statements such as, 'The one thing that people will never have to suffer under a coalition government is an unnecessary new tax, a tax that could easily be replaced by savings found from the budget.' That was what the member for Warringah said in parliament on 10 February 2011 when speaking about the flood levy to rebuild Queensland. The coalition opposed the flood levy. They thought those savings could be found from within the budget. But they do support the fuel tax. That is despite the statement by the member for Warringah on 10 May 2012, when he said that people who work hard should 'not be hit with higher taxes'. On 16 August 2011, he said:

A very clear message is going out from the Australian people to this government: there can be no tax collection without an election. If this government had any honesty, any decency, that is what we would have: an election now.

That was repeated again in this parliament on 14 September 2011:

I say to this Prime Minister: there should be no new tax collection without an election.

If the Prime Minister is to stick to his pre-election claims, then, apparently, Australia should be going to the polls, because that is exactly what has been foisted on the Australian people—an increase in the fuel tax in direct contravention of the Prime Minister's pre-election promises. As the Prime Minister said before the election, on 19 September 2012:

The time for big-spending, big-taxing, big-fibbing government has gone.

I am afraid the Australian people do not see it that way. They see a government that is raising their taxes and fibbing to them all the way. And worse than the promise-breaking is that the government is trying to mislead the Australian people, with the prevaricating we have heard this week about the cuts to the ABC and the claims that you did not have to listen to the member for Warringah when he was campaigning to be Prime Minister—no, that was just window-dressing—what you needed to do instead was to look at the carefully crafted words of the member for Wentworth beforehand.

Clearly, when the member for Warringah told Australians on 9 August 2013 that the only party that was going to increase taxes after the election was the Labor Party, he was misleading Australians.

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are not going to spend a whole half hour on this!

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 14 March 2012 he said:

What you'll get under us are tax cuts without new taxes.

Again, he was clearly misleading Australians. The member for Herbert asked me whether I am going to spend a full half-hour talking about this. I say to the member for Herbert: I am not, but I could, because there is enough material on the public record from your leader saying that he would keep his promises, saying that he would not raise taxes, and yet that is exactly what Australians have been slugged with.

We are debating today a measure which arises directly from yet another broken promise among the litany of cuts to health and education to the tune of $80 billion, and cuts to the ABC—seeing great ABC workers losing their jobs, cutting the Stateline programs and cutting Bush Telegraph,which is so important for regional communities. But, as they have gone about trying to break this election promise, the government have blundered yet again. The once shiny Treasurer is not so shiny after he drove directly into a fuel tax blunder. Let me quote very clearly what the member for North Sydney told ABC radio in regard to the fuel tax:

What we’re asking is for everyone to contribute, including higher income people. Now, I’ll give you one example: the change to fuel excise, the people that actually pay the most are higher income people, with an increase in fuel excise and yet, the Labor Party and the Greens are opposing it. They say you’ve got to have wealthier people or middle-income people pay more. Well, change to the fuel excise does exactly that; the poorest people either don’t have cars or actually don’t drive very far in many cases. But, they are opposing what is meant to be, according to the Treasury, a progressive tax.

Let us step through those claims that the poorest people either do not have cars or do not drive very far, and that the fuel excise is a progressive tax. I am indebted here to an ABC Fact Check,updated on 28 October 2014, which rates this claim overall as 'misleading'. First of all, the claim that poor people do not have cars: in a media release accompanying this extraordinary claim, Mr Hockey published a chart showing that 35 per cent of the lowest income households did not have cars. This is somewhat surprising, because there is an Australian Bureau of Statistics publication called Car Nation, which finds that only 15 per cent of those in the bottom income range do not have cars. That is 35 per cent in one and 15 per cent in the other; there are slightly different measures of low income, but that is a big difference. So ABC Fact Checklooked into it, and it turned out that the way in which Treasury had boosted the share of households that did not have a car was by assuming that if you answered 'not stated' or 'not applicable' to the question, then you did not have a car. They contacted the Australian Bureau of Statistics about this and the Australian Bureau of Statistics frankly said that they would not make those sorts of assumptions. They would not try to inflate statistics on the share of Australians without a car by assuming that, if you did not answer the question, you did not have a car. But, even if we take the government at face value, their own statistics show that in the poorest income group two-thirds of households had a car. It is probably an underestimate; it is probably more like 80 per cent of those in the bottom-income groups that have cars. Clearly, any way you cut the data, poor people drive.

What about the claim that they do not drive very far? We turn to Professor Graham Currie from the Institute of Transport Studies at Monash University. He conducted research in 2008 on average travel distances for people who live on the urban fringe of Melbourne and for inner-area residents. It is not a perfect measure of low and high income, but we do know that inner-urban residents tend to have higher average incomes than those on the urban fringe. The typical travel distance for those in the inner areas is 6.4 kilometres a trip and for those in outer fringe areas is 16.4 kilometres a trip. The implication, as Professor Curries puts it, is that 'They have higher costs for travel and longer travel times.' Professor Currie also points out that people on the urban fringe are more likely to be travelling by car because there is very little public transport. So, on the inner fringe, a much higher share of trips are by public transport than in inner areas. Again, poor people have cars and poor people drive further.

What about this extraordinary claim that the petrol tax is a progressive tax? What is the definition of a progressive tax? As any economist will tell you, it is a tax where the share of total income is higher for those at the top of the distribution than for those at the bottom of the distribution. Is that the data that the Treasurer produced? No, I am afraid not. The data that the Treasurer produced was dollar expenditure. He showed that higher income Australians spend more on fuel. This is absolutely true. But that is not what we are talking about here. Of course higher income Australians spend more on fuel. Higher income Australians spend more on just about anything. In the 2009-10 household expenditure survey there are 593 items, and for 580 of the 593 items the rich spend more than the poor. There are only 13 items for which the poor spend more than the rich. The point of a progressive tax, as any Treasurer who knows his economics would know, is that the share of income is higher for the top than for the bottom, and this is very clearly a tax whose burden falls more heavily on the bottom than the top.

If you look carefully at household expenditure statistics, petrol accounts for a higher share of spending among low-income households than high-income households. Fuel tax is therefore a modestly regressive tax. So, on all three counts, poor people drive cars, they drive further and they spend a larger share of their income on fuel, and it might be reasonable if the Treasurer were to say, 'Well, I know it's a regressive tax. I know it'll hit the poor hardest. But I've put in place a compensation mechanism to look after the most vulnerable, to protect them from the impact of my regressive fuel tax increase.' But that is not what this budget did. This is one measure amidst an extraordinarily regressive budget, possibly the most regressive budget that Australia has ever seen.

This is entirely unlike what happened when a carbon price was introduced in Australia, when a household assistance package ensured that nine out of 10 Australian households received household assistance and that those at the bottom received more in disposable incomes after the package than before the package. No, this is a regressive fuel tax accompanied by a regressive budget. NATSEM analysis looking to 2017-18 analyses the change in disposable income of 18 different budget measures. That does not include the GP co-payment, but it does include the changes in family tax benefits, the clean energy supplement freeze, the changes to Newstart, the pensioner education supplement and senior supplement removal, dependent spouse tax offset removal and the changes in fuel tax indexation.

The poorest couples with children, those in the bottom fifth of the income distribution, lose 6.6 per cent of their disposable income. This is a huge whack to these households, losing more than one dollar in 20 out of their incomes. The poorest single parents, the single parents in the bottom fifth of the income distribution, lose 10.8 per cent of their disposable income. What an extraordinary government it is that would think that it is all right to look at the poorest single mums in Australia and take one dollar of every 10 out of their wallets. No government in Australian history has ever been so brutal to Australian low-income single parents as has this government in taking one dollar in 10 from the pockets of these households. Think of a single parent family on $65,000 a year. They are losing something in the order of $6,000. That is a massive whack to the most vulnerable Australians.

We on this side of the House are not supporting the change in indexation to the fuel excise because it is a broken promise. The poorest people do have cars, do drive further and do spend more on fuel. This is not, as the Treasurer has claimed, a progressive tax. The indexation of the petrol tax to CPI means Australians will pay about $19 billion more for petrol over the next decade.

Labor strongly opposes the re-indexation of the fuel excise, but we will be supporting this measure because we are willing to work with the government to implement sensible changes to our tax system. We are supporting this bill because if we did not it would see eligible businesses being punished unfairly by this government's fuel tax increase. This is a government, though, that has snuck its fuel tax change through. Knowing that it could not get it through the parliament, knowing that it would not be able to get it through the Senate, this government, instead, bypassed parliament and increased fuel tax by regulation.

They would have you believe that this is the same as what Labor did with the excise increase on alcopops. That is palpably not the case.

Government members interjecting—

With alcopops, as members on the other side have helpfully noted, it was a health measure. It did not aim to hurt the poor; it aimed to assist the poor and reduce binge drinking. But the principle is also different. In the case of alcopops, there was a broad indication of support that the measure would eventually pass the parliament, which it eventually did.

Let's face it, there is no broad indication that a fuel tax increase would ever pass this parliament. The government's unfair agenda is foundering in the Senate and no-one seriously believes that this measure will eventually be legislated. If the government is not able to pass legislation to ratify its fuel tariff proposals, businesses will be required to pay back the excess to the Tax Office. That has been raised as a concern by stakeholders in their submission to the Senate Economics Committee's inquiry into the bill. In fact, the Australian Trucking Association has raised the issue. They have said:

Requiring operators to pay back their extra fuel tax credits would only make sense if they could also claim back the extra fuel tax they paid.

This will not be the case, as the money will be refunded to fuel manufacturers and fuel importers. It is a slapdash approach to policy making, where the government does not consult with the opposition, and it ultimately leads to worse outcomes for all Australians.

We are an opposition that opposes arbitrary increases in fuel taxes, but we are not a wrecking opposition; we are working constructively with the government to ensure that eligible Australian businesses are not unduly punished by the way in which this government has ham-fistedly attempted to go about implementing its policies.

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Tax and Superannuation Laws Amendment (2014 Measures No. 6) Bill 2014. Now, I like the member for Fraser; I think he is a reasonable man and I think he is a good man. But perhaps I could just tell you a story. When I was a young fellow, when I was playing subdistrict Rugby Union in Brisbane, I was very keen on this girl who was working for the Commonwealth Bank. I was very keen on her. I was playing for the Westpac Rugby club, and she was associated with the Commonwealth Bank Rugby club. So we sent each other our match reports. We were both speaking about the same game, but the two reports were completely and utterly different. You could not possibly have seen what the game was about. Similarly, when we were all sitting in our offices and talking about family law conflicts and child custody, the mother of the children would come in and tell you her side of the story, and then the father of the children would come in and tell you his side of the story, and you would never know that they were the same marriage.

That is what we have just heard here. The member for Fraser has stood up here and lambasted us over changes to the single parent's pension. I do not want to rake over this, and I was not going to touch on it. But what Labor did to single parents when they were in government had nothing to do with helping people to go to work. It had nothing to do with anything, because most single parents—most single female parents—actually do work. What they did by changing the single parent's pension back to Newstart was to cruelly, harshly and unjustly target single parents' pensions, not to give people an opportunity to get to work but to get their budget back into order. I know that the member for Jagajaga has come out and said that they probably got that one wrong, but for the member for Fraser to stand there and lecture us about the treatment of single parents is just a little bit rich.

I just want to quickly go through what these bills actually say—

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is good, because, whilst I am enjoying your address, it would be great for the member for Herbert to go to the bill.

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is broadly about the bill. Everything I do is about the bill! Schedule 1—Removing Tax Impediments to Certain Business Restructures—was first announced by Labor in 2011-12. Labor had 92 unenacted tax and superannuation measures. Schedule 2 is the Managed Investment Trust Withholding Regime for Foreign Pension Funds. So, once again, it is a fairly dry bit of gear. It was announced by the previous government but not legislated. On schedule 3, initiatives were first announced in 2011 by the previous government, by the then Prime Minister, and the President of the United States. Once again, it was announced by the previous government and not enacted.

Fuel indexation measures, as announced in the 2014 budget, are ours; this is what we will do. The one difference in our legislation in relation to fuel indexation measures is that we have legislated that the money will have to go to roads. It has to go to roads. Again, as a young bloke, the one thing I hated when fuel indexation came in was that the money went into general revenue and never roads. And I think that is the one thing that people have been saying: 'Well, at least it's going to roads.'

We went to the election with four key promises, four key things we wanted to do. We said we would axe the carbon and mining taxes, and we have done that. We said we would stop the boats, and we had only one successful boat this year. We said we would build the roads to the 21st century, and to a large extent we have that underway. Greg Hunt, as Minister for the Environment, has announced over $800 billion worth of environmental approvals to get this economy going. And the fourth pillar was to fix the budget. That is where I go back to my analogy about the two football stories. Andrew Leigh, the member for Fraser, is a very clever guy. He understands economics. He understands budgets, and he knows they have to balance. He knows that budgets contain two sides: they contain income and they contain outgoings. If you do not get enough income and you do not check your outgoings you will end up in deficit. If you have too much income and not enough outgoings you will stall your economy. It is a balancing act.

We are going on with all this palaver about who said what before an election. But when the facts change, people should change their minds. I will go back to the first real example I saw—the 1983 election. I was watching the Bob Hawke Australian Story, and Barry Cassidy was standing at the front of Old Parliament House saying, 'Bob Hawke was elected to bring the nation together.' Well, that is not right. In 1983 Bob Hawke was elected to increase pensions, to increase the number of university spaces, to get higher wages for absolutely everyone and to improve unemployment benefits. But when he got in he saw that the economy under Fraser was not as good as it should have been, and he junked the lot. So, when the circumstances changed, he changed that: the floating of the dollar, one of the greatest things that this country every had—no doubt the member for Fraser was well and truly in favour of the floating of the dollar, because what we had before was the creeping peg, or the crawling peg, and it was that arbitrary thing that everyone had to do. Keating made the decision to float the dollar, and we supported it. But did he take it to an election? No, he did not, because he was faced with a set of circumstances where he had to act. And then we go to HECS.

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Did they promise they wouldn't implement HECS?

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Did they take HECS to an election? No, they did not. They were faced with a set of circumstances. Now, I am not as smart as Andrew Leigh. I do not have any letters after my name. So, when I go into this thing, I have to look at what we are actually doing. I would have to bring everything back to what I did when I ran a business and what I do in my own home. When I was a little kid, when my mum burnt dinner we did not all pile into the car and go down the road to the hotel and get a countery, or go to a restaurant and get a high-flying meal. What we did in our house, because we had limited income, was have toast or baked beans or something like that. We made do with what we had because you just do not go and spend what you do not have. What we have to do as a government is understand that we have shrinking income and growing projections going into the future so if we do not adjust what we are doing, we will just keep on going forward.

I heard the member for Griffith during the MPI say that we have one of the lowest debt to GDP ratios in the OECD. That may very well be true but we also started with fairly low debt to GDP. We are a small population with debt. It goes back to my role as an auctioneer where I specialised in insolvency. It gets down to not so much debt to GDP ratio; it gets down to how much cash you have got and your ability to repay that loan. It does not take much before all the cash that you are supposed to have to run your business goes towards paying off your loans, and that is what sends businesses to the wall.

Too many times I have walked into good solid businesses where a manager or an owner of a business has lost control of their spending, has got into trouble either because debt was easy to obtain or because the interest rates were so incredibly high and has got into the situation where more and more of their working capital is going back to the bank. I do not think the business community, especially small businesses, are out there saying that they are on top of everything because I do not think that they are. What we have to do is get small businesses to say they will take a punt.

As the member for Griffith says, Queensland's unemployment is rising. In my city of Townsville, we have real trouble with youth unemployment. When an economy starts to contract or starts to hurt, it is the aged unemployment and the youth unemployment which gets hit first because a small business is not going to take a punt on someone who has no experience or on someone who may have bad habits. What they will do is get someone who is already in a job, who has a proven track record and they will poach them from somebody else. When a person is poached, they will not be replaced in the other firm. So what we have to do is instil that confidence for business people to take a punt on a young person or take a punt on an older person, to put them on and to have a real go at this job because that is how we produce income.

I said in my maiden speech what government must do is get their hands out of small business's pocket. Let them get on with their business and let them create wealth. In my city of Townsville, we have an opportunity where we can do a lot of things. We have an opportunity to back winners but government can only do so much. Government can set the scene but it is the small businesses that grow around that which produce the jobs and create the wealth. They are the ones that do that.

Tax is a nasty word but it is a part of our lives. We cannot survive as a nation without taxes. What we have to do is look at what we are doing here. We need to balance up what our income is and what our outgoings are, and both have to be adjusted. This bill goes some way to adjusting some of the things that the previous government had legislated but had not enacted. What we have to do is make sure that we start getting on with the business of clearing the decks and making sure that in small business, in big business and in any business that people have the opportunity to get a job. If more people are getting jobs then more people are paying tax, more people are consuming and away we go. I back the government with these things because sooner or later it has to be understood that we have to have a budget that balances.

I will go back to my starting point. I like the member for Fraser. He is a very clever man and he also gets it: a budget which balances is a budget which is healthy. We can talk about how we get there as much as we like but we agree on that basic principle. We can agree that governments have to adjust to a certain set of circumstances like the previous government did to the GFC. Those opposite did not take their response to the GFC to an election. What they saw was a set of circumstances change rapidly and they had to adjust to it. We backed them on the first set of stimulus. Governments must react to changing circumstances. That is what governments do. We cannot just keep going around these things. We have to balance the budget and this goes part of the way to doing it.

I cannot take my children every year to Disneyland. They have never been to Disneyland. Why? Because I cannot afford it. I do not want to disappoint my kids and they are disappointed that they cannot go. But at the end of the day, I can take them to Disneyland. I can be the world's best dad but we will be living in the street. I just had a quote done for an outdoor extension and a pergola at my house. It was worth more than my house. I would love to have it done but I would be over capitalising on the thing and I would be spending money I do not have. If we apply the same basic things to government then we are halfway there.

I think we try and complicate these things a little bit too much in this place. It just gets down to: we have to work hard and we have to balance the budget. I think both sides of this place agree with that. I agree with this bill. I agree with the general narrative of what we are doing. No-one wants to tax people more than we absolutely have to. But when you are in a hole and you are paying off debt, it does not come out of your gross income; it comes out of your net income. It comes out of your cash and all repayments hurt. The people who say there are 72 easy repayments are lying to you because all repayments hurt because they come out of your net income, not out of the the gross. I back the government on this and I thank the House.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

First, I would like to thank those members who have contributed to this debate, although I must take issue with the member for Fraser. Whilst I appreciate his contribution, I do need to point out that if Labor had really cared about low-income earners, they would have been more responsible in government. In six years in government they had the opportunity to be more responsible, to look after the interests of low-income earners and they missed grasping that opportunity.

This bill does make several important improvements to our tax law. The measures in this bill are part of the government's commitment to give business and investors the certainty that they need.

This bill includes two measures that are part of the backlog of 92 announced but unlegislated measures that we inherited when we came to government on 7 September last year. One of the measures improves the arrangements for business restructures and the other improves the law around investments in managed investment trusts. Each of these measures will give local and overseas investors greater confidence to make investment decisions. We are making Australia open for business. We have heard the Prime Minister say that on many occasions—'open for business'. The government is getting on with clearing the backlog of unenacted legislation. Unfortunate, but true; we have to do it. We are committed to giving business the certainty it needs to get on with doing business.

This bill also makes sure that there are no cashflow issues for businesses from the government's implementation of the budget measure reintroducing the biennial indexation of fuel excise to the consumer price index. In difficult budget circumstances, this is the responsible way to immediately start building the productivity-boosting roads Australia needs. In the long run, this will assist all businesses by reducing the costs of transporting goods around the country.

Schedule 1 amends the income tax provisions to make it easier for businesses to restructure and to be able to make more efficient use of their capital. In particular, these amendments will extend some of the business restructure roll-over provisions to revenue assets and trading stock. These roll-over provisions are important because they allow businesses to defer the income tax consequences which can arise during a restructure. This measure also includes technical amendments which improve the operation of the law. Through removing income tax barriers to restructuring, the government is supporting Australian businesses, large and small, to grow and prosper.

Schedule 2 of this bill will amend the law so that foreign pension funds will be treated as the final beneficiary of a fund payment and will have access to the concessional managed investment trusts withholding tax. This treatment is consistent with the original intention of parliament. These amendments ensure that a foreign pension fund that receives payment as a trustee will be taken to be a beneficiary in its own right. As a result, it will be liable to pay income tax at the concessional managed investment trusts withholding tax rate. This reform is one of several announced but unenacted measures left behind by the former government. These amendments were actively sought by the Australian funds management industry. Foreign capital is crucial to funds that will invest in new infrastructure. The government has responded by getting this amendment done.

Schedule 3 of this bill will amend the law to give effect to taxation arrangements for the US force posture initiatives in Australia. The US force posture initiatives in Australia were first announced by the government of Australia and the government of the United States of America in 2011. The initiatives represent an important development in Australia's alliance and bilateral defence relationships with the United States. They involve annual rotational US Marine Corps deployments and aircraft cooperation activities in Northern Australia. A legislative amendment to the tax law is required to give effect to provide an exemption from Australian tax for the Australian-source income of US contractors in connection with the US force posture initiatives. The legislative amendment will apply only to US contractors performing duties directly connected with the force posture initiatives in Australia and not to US contractors in Australia performing other unrelated duties for the United States government. The exemption from Australian tax will only apply if the relevant income is taxable in the United States. This ensures that the United States would not be able to use contractors for work that could be done by Australian workers and service providers, which in turn maximises the potential benefits for Australian small businesses.

The government announced as part of the 2014-15 budget that it would reintroduce the indexation of excise and excise-equivalent customs duty on fuel. This will provide a secure source of funding for additional road infrastructure, which is sorely needed. The government has tabled fuel excise and customs tariff proposals to give effect to this commitment. For a typical household which consumes 50 litres of fuel per week—a tankful—the estimated price impact of fuel indexation by the end of 2014-15 will be about 40 cents per week; just 40 cents per week. The amendments made by schedules 4 and 5 of this bill will simplify the current law and will apply to the current tariff proposals and any future fuel duty tariff proposals. Schedule 4 will ensure that businesses eligible to claim fuel tax credits will receive increased fuel tax credits to fully offset the increase in fuel excise paid, claimable as soon as possible.

This bill will introduce amendments so that, when a tariff proposal increases the rate of fuel duty being collected, businesses claiming fuel tax credits or grants under the Cleaner Fuels Grants Scheme will continue to receive the appropriate credit or grant. The amendments to fuel tax credits ensure that fuel duty is a tax on final consumption of fuel rather than a tax on business inputs. This will avoid any negative cashflow consequences that result from the use of tariff proposals. This bill will also make similar amendments to the operation of the Cleaner Fuels Grants Scheme. Full details of each of these measures are contained in the explanatory memorandum.

The government has outlined a plan to build a future that is just, that is pioneering and that is prosperous. That is something that we all want. A key part of this is creating the environment in which Australian businesses can grow and flourish and, in difficult budget circumstances, taking responsible steps now to immediately start building the productivity-boosting roads that Australia so desperately needs. The measures in this bill are part of the government's plan to help investors, small business and corporate Australia get on with the job they do best—creating opportunities so that all Australians can benefit. I commend this bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.