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

My question is to the Prime Minister. Is the Prime Minister aware that in just 18 days time, on 1 July, AGL power prices in New South Wales will go up by 16 per cent, penalty rates will be cut for nearly 700,000 Australians and millionaires will get a tax cut? When household budgets for low- and middle-income Australians are getting even tighter, why is the Prime Minister's only priority to give people who earn $1 million a tax cut?

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

I think it is clear that the Leader of the Opposition's only priority is to try to whip up, in his characteristically feeble matter, a politics-of-envy campaign. That is what he tries to do, posing yet again as the champion of the poor and oppressed, bleating about millionaires in Canberra and sucking up to them in Melbourne. We all know his form. He sold out the members of the AWU again and again. There was not a big company that he was not prepared to cut a deal with to sell out their penalty rates.

Ms Plibersek interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Sydney!

Ms Plibersek interjecting—

The member for Sydney is warned.

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

He did it with CleanEvent, he did it with Chiquita Mushrooms and he did it with so many others. The workers, the members of his union, know that. He can turn his back on the government benches, but he cannot turn his back on his past—a serial sellout, a man who has flipped back and forward and temporised at every turn. There is no consistency in his political lines or in his lines as an industrial leader. He is constantly letting down his own team.

He talks about tax. He is opposing tax cuts for Australian businesses. He wants to roll back—remember that another Labor leader was keen on roll backs—the tax cuts that have already been delivered to Australia's small and medium businesses, which employ half the Australian workforce. Yet, only a few the years ago, he stood right where I am standing and said, with the air of a man who spent his life learning about economics—the great economist the Leader of the Opposition—that we all know that reducing company tax increases investment, productivity and employment, and the benefits go to workers. He said all that. Someone had put that in his talking points. Do you know what? They were correct. That was absolutely orthodox economic analysis. But, now, it suits him to campaign against tax cuts to business. He wants to pretend that the deficit levy is being abolished. It is not being abolished. It is expiring on exactly the terms that the Labor Party voted for. This was a tax increase three years ago which the Labor Party described as a 'deceit tax'. They condemned it. The member for McMahon was particularly eloquent. He said the Labor Party does not agree with increasing the top marginal rate. He said it was bad policy. But then, reluctantly, they voted for it but on the express condition that it expire after three years. The deficit levy is expiring in precisely the terms Labor voted for. This is just another example of the Leader of the Opposition's backflips and hypocrisy.