Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I begin by congratulating the hardworking, diligent and committed member for Brisbane for bringing this motion forward. There are few people in this federal parliament that I think have demonstrated such a strong commitment not just to their constituents but also to the economic reform that this country needs.

To have a member like the member for Brisbane serve his community as strongly as he does, by bringing forward motions such as this, is so critical, because he understands that the foundations of this country do not come from fiddling bureaucrats and politicians in Canberra messing in people's lives and telling them how best to live them. He understands, like everybody on the coalition side, that the foundations of this great country are when people are empowered and encouraged to stand on their own two feet, to go off to work and enjoy the fruits of their labour and their hard work and initiative. When those people come together and form families, and are in a financial position to care and support each other, that's the foundation of a strong community. That's the foundation of a strong nation.

The motion that's before us is, simply, to highlight that we should always want families and hard workers to keep more of the money they earn in their pockets, rather than be sucked up to Canberra by the Australian Taxation Office and the commissioner to be spent by people in this place. It's not because we don't see a role for tax. There is a role. We all have to share and carry the cost of our society. But when people have more money in their pockets they have more choices about the future of this country and their own families. They have the incentives in place. One of the great liberal philosophers of the 20th century regularly spoke about what happens when people have more money in their pockets: they're yet to decide their own future and their own destiny.

Of course, we don't have all the information we need, to run this country, in Canberra. It might make sense that we live in a perfect society where politicians and bureaucrats and regulators pull levers to direct the nation in one country or another, but that's what we see in other societies. The strength of our country comes from the individual up. That's why cutting taxes, and particularly income tax, is so critical. Income tax is the clearest way the government comes and gouges out of people's pockets and takes their hard-earned money for the benefit of politicians and regulators.

That's why this government has been so clear in prioritising income tax relief for Aussie workers. We recognise that people have to pay their fair share of income tax. We understand that low-income earners already make a significant contribution and struggle to make ends meet. We understand that when they put their electricity bill on the kitchen table they look at their budget and try to figure out how they'll pay it off. That's why there are lower taxes for lower-income workers. We understand that for the millions of Australians who are part of the middle class, the middle-income earners, during those critical years of their lives when they're doing okay but they're trying to get ahead, the job of Canberra is not to thrust the hand of big government into their pockets and take as much out as they can. It's to turn around and pat them on the back and say, 'Well done, for your hard work and your initiative, because you are the backbone of this country.' That is why we have cut the income tax rate for middle-income earners.

Under the last budget of the coalition government you will see middle-income-earning Australians not paying more than a third of their income into income tax. More critically, higher-income earners will continue to pay a higher tax rate, to share the burden across the whole of the country. And, yes, those opposite have raised the challenge of making sure that government lives within its means. I completely agree with that agenda. In fact, what at every point has happened is that this coalition government has tried to match reducing tax rates on middle-income earners while also making sure that we minimise the deficit. Eventually we will return it to surplus, not in the way that they promised but in the way that we will deliver. We have gone down the economically responsible pathway—by encouraging initiative, encouraging award and encouraging economic opportunity.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian economy might be growing, but workers' share of the economic pie is now at a record low. While business is booming, wages aren't even keeping pace with the cost of living. But rather than fixing stalling wages and ballooning living costs, this government actively employs policies to drive down workers' pay and boost corporate returns even further.

This is a government with some of the most diabolically twisted priorities you could imagine. While those opposite pander to the every wish of big business, they have simultaneously been waging a savage war on workers. Just look at their track record: I note the cut to penalty rates, that they opposed increases to the minimum wage and that they reject plans to reform unfair labour hire practices. They try, relentlessly, to cripple workers' ability to organise and negotiate outcomes for themselves and they refuse to act on excessive tax breaks that largely benefit high-income earners but which aren't accessible to the majority of workers. They spend every last penny of political capital they've ever had in trying to rip tens of billions of dollars out of the budget for corporate tax cuts. And still today they don't have a single credible policy to address the dire wage stagnation facing this country.

Last week, the national accounts revealed exactly what those grossly unfair policies have led to: a dangerously distorted economy, where corporate profits are now growing at five times faster than wages. While business recorded exceptional profits of 8.8 per cent on average, average wage growth was only 1.6 per cent, well below inflation. And anyone who believes the government when they say their income tax plan will make a different is in for a rude shock. Mr Morrison's tax plan will indeed be a boom for the wealthy. But for low-income workers—the people who really need and deserve a tax break? Well, they're expected to be grateful for the offering of the crumbs under the table.

Just take the case of a surgeon earning $200,000. She'll get a massive tax cut of $7,225 a year, while a carer earning $30,000 is less than $4 a week better off. That's it—a measly $4. That isn't fair and it isn't right. Australians deserve a government focused on growth that benefits all Australians, not just the top end of town. That's exactly what Labor's tax plan delivers. Under Labor's plan for bigger, better and fairer income tax cuts, 10 million workers will be better off. With inequality at a 75-year high, our tax plan is unashamedly focused on fairness and helping low- and middle-income workers with genuine tax relief. In my home city of Newcastle, 64,000 workers will be $928 a year better off under Labor than they are now. For the average household, this means an extra $400 compared to what the government is offering. In stark contrast, 60 per cent of the benefits of the Prime Minister's plan will end up in the pockets of high-income earners.

But Labor's plan isn't just better for workers, it's better for the budget. According to official figures published on Friday, gross debt now sits at $534.9 billion. This is a record high, and almost double what it was when the Liberals came to office in 2013. So much for being good economic managers! But for a group of people who couldn't finish a sentence—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 12 : 33 to 12 : 48

But, for a group of people who couldn't finish a sentence without squealing about the debt and deficit disaster not so long ago, they've been remarkably quiet about the state of the books of late. Their tax plan shows that they are much more focused on bestowing billions on high-income earners than on reducing the debt. But Labor doesn't think it sensible or responsible to be handing out tax cuts to top income earners at a budgetary cost of many billions of dollars. We understand that every dollar of revenue you forgo is a dollar you can't spend on health, education or budget repair.

While the Morrison government remains committed to cutting from those who can't afford it to give to those who don't need it, Labor will take a different path. We will deliver genuine, targeted tax relief to low- and middle-income workers and proper funding for critical public services and will pay back more of the debt faster. Only Labor can be relied on to deliver a fairer, more sustainable tax system for all Australians.

Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am a little surprised today that we're debating this motion about the government's Personal Income Tax Plan, as the government want yet again a pat on their back for their so-called strong economic leadership of our country, but, when I look at the speakers list, the government can only provide one speaker to back in their so-called economic policy leadership! We know in this country that there is and has been no economic leadership under the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government. We know that they have no energy policy. We saw the Minister for the Environment this morning explaining that the only policy they have is to recycle the Direct Action policy, pioneered by the Prime Minister before the last Prime Minister. We know they have no tax policy. We know that Senator Cormann was forced to junk their plans for corporate tax at the last time we met, and they have no plan at all to deal with the flatlining of wages. In fact, the only plan that we know of is to resume their systemic attacks on working people and their organisations.

Quite frankly, they are a government that have given up on government. They might come, fly into Canberra, take some pot shots at one another, work out whether they're bullies or not bullies or whether they have a gender problem or not a gender problem, leak WhatsApp conversations against each other on the front page of the paper, talk about each other or brief against each other to journalists, but they don't actually outline how or why they should be governing.

I am interested in the discussion today because the one poor government member who was forced in to somehow defend the government's economic agenda refused to talk about 'once upon a time', which we heard about in lecture after lecture about the debt and deficit emergency. We saw just last week during the chaos, the division and the nightmare that is the Morrison government—or the muppet show, as the Prime Minister likes to describe the government—that gross debt now sits at $534.9 billion. I want to place on record today that that's almost double the $280 billion it was when the Liberals came to office in 2013. So, despite all the talk and all of their lectures about 'debt and deficit disaster', you won't hear a peep from the Liberals—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 12:52 to 13:04

As I was saying, you never hear members of the government talk about the so-called debt and deficit disaster. In the last two years of the five years that this government has been in power, the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison era, that debt has now crashed through half a trillion dollars. That's the largest amount of debt that we've ever seen in our nation's history. Net debt has doubled, and both kinds of debt are growing faster under the Liberals than under the previous Labor government, which had a global financial crisis to contend with.

When it comes to fairness, we know that there is no fairness no matter who leads a Liberal government. When someone in my electorate on $40,000 a year will get a tax cut of $455, while someone on $200,000 a year will get a tax cut of $7,255, how on earth could any person claim that that is fair? But that's exactly what the government believe, in their alternative universe.

So my message to the government today is clear: stop wearing and worrying about lapel badges, stop putting out offensive tweets that are demeaning to a whole range of Australians, stop leaking against each other and start governing for this country. Out in real Australia, out in the suburbs, out in the communities that I represent, the government of Australia are seen as a joke. When you see a Prime Minister whose priority is having people wear a lapel pin and who says, 'The reason I wear it is because it reminds me every single day whose side I'm on,' doesn't that tell you all about the government—worried about themselves, not worried about what Australia needs and what matters?

Debate adjourned.