Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. On the backpacker tax, the Prime Minister has gone from zero per cent to 32½ per cent, then to 19 per cent, then threatened 32½ per cent again, then to 15 per cent, then threatened 32½ per cent again—and every time he said it was his final offer. When will the Prime Minister accept Labor's sensible compromise of 13 per cent? Prime Minister, it is time to end the chaos.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Opposition has been described as a 'representative of the foreign workers union'. What he has been standing up for today is Labor's policy that foreign backpackers should pay less tax than the marginal rate of Australians working alongside them picking fruit. That is their policy. They want them to pay 10½ per cent; now they have upped it to 13 per cent just in the last few hours, following the policy leadership of Senator Jacqui Lambie.

When the Leader of the Opposition was a minister in the previous Labor government, he introduced the arrangements for Pacific islanders to come to work in Australia as seasonal workers, and it was a generous scheme designed to give them a tax break so they would only pay 15 per cent tax and they would be able to come to Australia, do seasonal work and remit money back to their families in some of the poorest countries in the world. The average household income per capita is around $1,650. These seasonal workers were remitting about $5,100 on average each for their six months time here. They are paying 15 per cent tax—that is their tax rate.

What the Labor Party is now proposing is that foreigners from Germany, from Norway—from some of the richest countries in the world—should pay less tax than Pacific islanders do. And now they are still going to pay less tax than Pacific islanders do. So that is the position of the Labor Party. Foreign backpackers from some of the richest countries in the world pay less tax than Australians, and they even pay less tax than Pacific islanders working here as part of an aid exercise designed to enable them to remit money to their families in their communities in some of the poorest countries in the world.

The Labor Party has no principles; it has no consistency; it has no values. It will not stand up for the people of the Pacific Islands. It will not stand up for Australians. All the Leader of the Opposition seeks is the briefest, most transient political gain—all politics, no principle, no substance.