George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This morning's announcement of a negotiated tax rate of 15 per cent for backpackers is good news and brings certainty to farming communities. The 15 per cent rate is a good outcome for farmers, backpackers and Aussie workers. I have always supported a rate of between 15 and 19 per cent because that is what farmers in my electorate told me what was needed. The Bowen Gumlu Growers Association in North Queensland proposed a rate of 15 percent, but I know farmers generally accepted our position of 19 per cent originally.

Aside from that position, it is important to find the right balance between competing interests on this issue—that is, the interests of foreign workers and their willingness to work on Aussie farms against the competing interests of Aussie workers who work alongside them. Aussie workers doing the same job on the same farm should not take home less pay than foreign workers who work alongside them. It would be grossly unfair for an Aussie worker to pay tax while a foreign worker paid none at all.

Farmers did not come to me saying that the tax rate should be zero. Even backpackers accept they should pay some tax. So it is perplexing to see Labor even today still saying they are happy with foreign workers paying zero tax. Labor never has and never will represent the farmers. Labor long ago gave up on representing Aussie workers. The only people Labor is representing on this issue is foreign workers and their own political self-interests.

Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is appropriate that I follow that nonsense from the member for Dawson just now because members of this place will know well that there is plenty of nonsense spouted on the website Twitter.com. Crazy people can say anything they want on this platform, especially in the so-called alt-Right—the anti-establishment right-wing conservatives that have taken over the platform in recent times. And I came across a cracking example of this today from a Twitter account called @Barnaby_Joyce—the Deputy Prime Minister, I believe, not a parity account. This tweet said:

Backpacker tax would never be 32%. We fought to take it to 19%. We said it would be resolved by Christmas. Welcome 15% break-through.

This was said despite the Deputy Prime Minister being a member of the Expenditure Review Committee that approved this measure; despite him being a member of the cabinet that approved this measure; despite him being a member of this parliament that debated this in the last budget.

This is beyond alt-Right; this is alt-reality. This is what we have come to expect from those opposite. But they cannot pretend that this shambolic, nonsensical policy-making process did not occur. They cannot mislead the Australian public and pretend that this embarrassing shambles of a policy-making process never occurred. They need to take responsibility for their actions. This would not have occurred if they had not initiated it in the first place. They should be honest with the Australian public and they should clean up their act in the future.