Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to start by congratulating the member for McEwen for bringing this motion to the House. I know that he is acutely aware of the need to provide cost-of-living relief for Australians in a responsible manner, and that is exactly what this Albanese Labor government is doing. The government has a broad and ambitious tax reform agenda. We have delivered a tax cut for every Australian taxpayer. That's 13.6 million people who will be receiving a tax cut. This includes 93,000 taxpayers in the federal electorate of Adelaide who will receive a tax cut. The average tax cut in my electorate will be $1,540. That's $1,540 extra in people's pockets. We are delivering bigger tax cuts for Middle Australia to help with the cost of living. We know that cost of living is a real issue at the moment, so this government is focused on doing whatever we can to put extra money in people's pockets and to ensure that wages keep up with the cost of living.

An additional 2.9 million Australians earning $45,000 or less, who were previously excluded under Scott Morrison's plan, will now share in the benefits of these tax cuts. Labor's tax cuts are providing greater tax relief to low- and middle-income taxpayers, who we know are disproportionately women. This will see 90 per cent of women taxpayers retaining, on average, an additional $707 per year compared with the previous legislated tax cuts. Parents, particularly women with young children, will be meaningfully supported to return to work under the government's changes, through increases to their take-home pay.

We've also increased the Medicare levy low-income thresholds for 2023-24, ensuring more than one million low-income taxpayers continue to be exempt from the Medicare levy or pay a reduced levy rate. Again, they will be exempted or pay a reduced levy rate, which means more money in people's pockets. Every year over the next decade, the average tax rate for the average worker will be lower under Labor's plan than under the plan of the previous Scott Morrison government. By 2034-35 someone earning an average income will pay $21,915 less tax than they would have without Labor's tax cuts.

Beyond tax cuts for every taxpayer, the priorities of this government for tax reform include making super concessions fairer and more affordable; ensuring that multinationals pay their fair share of tax here in Australia; and improving tax compliance to ensure individuals and businesses who don't follow the rules don't get an unfair advantage over those who do.

This Albanese Labor government is introducing these changes because it recognises the economic realities of 2024. Australians are under pressure right now, and they deserve a tax plan that responds to the challenges they are facing in a responsible, measured manner. The advice from Treasury is quite clear. It's clear that our tax cuts will not add to inflationary pressures, because they are broadly revenue-neutral. Our tax cuts are good for Middle Australia. They're good for women, good for working people, good for helping with cost-of-living pressures, good for labour supply and good for the economy.

It means, as I said when I started, more money in people's pockets and it means a bit of assistance towards cost-of-living expenses. The government's No. 1 priority is easing cost-of-living pressures, and we'll keep on working every day to deliver everything we can for all Australians and to ensure that the focus of the government is on dealing with cost-of-living pressures, inflation and doing everything we can to keep wages on par with the cost of living and put extra money in people's pockets.

Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for McEwen for moving this motion which acknowledges that Australians are experiencing a devastating cost-of-living crisis. While acknowledging the positive impact of the recent stage 3 tax cuts, I do want to speak to the other major driver of cost-of-living stress in my community.

Every day, members of the Kooyong community tell me that they are struggling with the cost of electricity and gas. They don't understand why the price of these necessities has increased so much and they ask me, 'What can we do to fix this?' I tell them this: Australians are paying too much for gas and electricity because of policy failures in our energy market. I tell my constituents that the wholesale price of electricity in Australia is three times less than what it was two years ago, because of increased rooftop solar and large-scale renewables, but that the retailers who are selling us this electricity are still increasing prices. They're doing that because we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on supporting ageing, unreliable coal-fuelled power stations. But then we're being slugged with huge prices during unplanned outages of those coal mines. This is because the spot price of electricity is set by the most expensive type of electricity needed to meet demand in the national electricity market, not the cheapest.

Gas is the most expensive form of electricity generation, and it is often the price setter. That drives up our power bills, massively. When we revert from renewables to power generated from coal or gas we can pay as much as 500 times more for the same electricity. Only 4.8 per cent of Australia's electricity comes from gas, but that electricity is so expensive that it drives our bills up and up and up. Australia is the world's second-largest exporter of coal and the fifth-largest exporter of gas. We do not have a shortage of gas. We use only 4.2 per cent of our gas production domestically, but Western Australia is the only state with a domestic gas reservation policy. So while the good people of WA enjoy the cheapest gas in the world, more than 80 per cent of the gas from the eastern seaboard of Australia is sold overseas by multinational companies. We pay more for that gas than the people who buy it overseas. Largely foreign owned companies are making windfall profits whilst price-gouging Australian customers for our own gas. This is a policy failure.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We sold it for 6c, and we're buying it back for $16.

Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Member for Kennedy. Australia has 10 facilities for its production and export of liquified natural gas. Six of those facilities pay no state or federal royalties. The ATO has labelled the oil and gas companies 'systemic nonpayers of tax'. The ACCC has found that the LNG industry has exported uncontracted gas in preference to supplying it to Australian markets—

Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I'll just interrupt the member for a moment. This private member's motion is on tax cuts. Is the member aware of that?

Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, I am.

Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Okay. I'm just waiting for you to refer to the actual subject of the private member's motion.

Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I mentioned tax cuts in my first sentence, Deputy Speaker. We have been let down by successive federal governments—by the Liberal-National coalition and its inaction on climate change, and by the Albanese government, which has negotiated a gas price cap which is almost double the production cost, effectively anchoring prices higher than they need to be, and which has exempted new gas projects from that price cap. The Albanese government's Future Gas Strategy is a 68-page document about gas which does not mention royalties, tax or revenue once. This is a policy failure.

Australians are smarter than their own government. We know how to bring electricity prices down. Three million Australian households have become electricity generators by investing in rooftop solar. The 40 per cent of our power that comes from solar, wind and hydro, however, is being cancelled out by the 60 per cent that is coming from coal and gas. So when Australians are struggling with high gas and electricity bills this winter they should remember that those prices are high because Australian governments have allowed virtually unlimited gas exports. They allow LNG export companies to price gouge us for our own gas, then they've set a price cap which is too high and then they've exempted new gas projects from that cap without a guaranteed increase in our domestic gas supply. Australians should be able to pay their own electricity bills. But, for that to happen, the government has to use its power to act on this all-important aspect of the cost-of-living crisis.

Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am going to talk about tax—tax policy and tax cuts—because this is what this debate is all about. It's a very important debate, and I want to acknowledge the member for moving this motion because the cost of living remains the No. 1 concern of voters across the country. Many members of my community in Wills and of other electorates across the country have been struggling for the past few years with the cost of living. It's crunch living standards that have made ordinary working people worse off, and it's important to remember that this wasn't by accident. For 10 years we had a coalition government that squeezed ordinary Australians through raising taxes to their highest levels in over 30 years—that's a fact—and gouged hard-earned money from many in my hardworking community. This is coupled with, to quote former finance minister Mathias Cormann, a 'deliberate' policy to keep wages low, which has held our country back and left ordinary people behind.

Members will recall, I'm sure—the member for Kennedy will recall this—when former Treasurer Joe Hockey was dismissive and, in his entitled tone, talked about lifters and leaners, reflecting a sentiment synonymous with the coalition and their utter indifference to ensuring we look after working people and develop a tax system that is fair and also encourages aspiration. Given this frankly embarrassing record of supposedly being the party of low tax, which they are the opposite of—the highest taxes in 30 years—it is galling to hear the crowing from the coalition on tax and cost of living now that they're in opposition, when they did nothing about it for 10 years.

I'm pleased to say that this government, the Albanese government, has a very different approach. We have an ambitious tax reform agenda, and the cost-of-living tax cuts we delivered are a key part of that. These cost-of-living tax cuts were aimed at Middle Australia. They were aimed at building the foundations for a better future. Our tax changes mean that, in my electorate of Wills, 78,000 taxpayers received a tax cut on 1 July. An additional 2.9 million Australians who were excluded under Scott Morrison's plan now share in the tax cuts the Albanese Labor government has delivered, because we moved the bulk of those tax cuts to Middle Australia—to low- and middle-income earners, not the top five per cent or the top one per cent. Our changes to the coalition plan have also meant that 85 per cent more people in my electorate of Wills will be better off.

These tax cuts also have an eye to the future. Under the government's plan, the average taxpayer will pay approximately $22,000 less of their income in tax over the next decade. That's money back in their pocket that they can use for the cost of living. This will also increase the labour supply and add to the efforts of both the RBA and the government to ensure inflation returns to target. These ambitions, coupled with the government's policy to stimulate wages, are aimed at ensuring Australians are better off.

Beyond the cost-of-living tax cuts, the government's reform agenda is all about making the tax system fairer. This includes ensuring that multinational companies pay their fair share of tax. It's also about ensuring that superannuation concessions are fairer and more affordable. It's about ensuring that reforms of the petroleum resource rent tax ensure that offshore LNG companies deliver more of their profits to the Australian people rather than to offshore investors. And it's about improving tax compliance to ensure individuals and businesses who follow the rules are not disadvantaged by the unfair practices of those who do exploit the system.

Ultimately, the Albanese Labor government's cost-of-living tax cuts are good for Middle Australia. We know that. They're good for women, they're good for helping with cost-of-living pressures, and they're good for the economy. Treasury advice shows that these tax cuts will not add to the inflationary pressures and will contribute to ensuring that inflation returns to target. The Labor government introduced these tax cuts because it recognises the economic realities of 2024 and the world that we're living in today. Australians are under pressure right now and deserve a tax plan that responds to the challenges they are now facing. That's why the tax cuts are going into their pockets. Gone are the days when the coalition deliberately kept wages low. This government, the Albanese Labor government, is committed to ensuring Australians can earn more and keep more of what they earn.

Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My good friend the member for Wills and I agree on a couple of things, mainly about how great Collingwood is, but we don't agree on these tax cuts. Like a lot of those opposite, he is very clever with his language. I notice there's been a shift in the ALP's language. They don't do policy well, they can't solve the cost-of-living crisis, they have no answer to inflation and they don't talk about productivity, but what they do do well is politics and word games. The member for Wills gave a great example of that just then.

For the first couple of months during the changes, the backflips and the broken promises from the 'word is my bond' Prime Minister, they were still calling them the stage 3 tax cuts. But, as the member for Wills showed just then, they've merged that and changed them into the 'cost-of-living tax cuts'. Now, the reason they don't like calling them the stage 3 tax cuts anymore is that they like to forget about stage 1 and stage 2, which were part of a broad, holistic, long-term package. But there's a real reason that they hate talking about stage 3. It's that they don't like talking about stage 2. Stage 2 of those tax cuts was the low- and middle-income tax offset, and that gave $1,500 back into the pay packets of every Australian that was on a low or middle income, hence the name.

What those opposite did last year was they let that lapse, and we know that many people felt it. It went viral all over social media—how upset and frustrated people were when putting in their tax returns, wanting to get that $1,500 back, but it was gone because those opposite let it lapse. They were happy to let that measure lapse right when Australians really needed $1,500 in their pocket. But they now pat themselves on the back and say, 'Cost-of-living crisis over—job done. We broke our word, but we're going to give the Australian people $15 a week extra, and that has solved the problem. We'll take away last year's $1,500 and we'll give you $15 a week, and you can say thank you.' We're now at a time when energy prices are through the roof, mortgages are through the roof, rents are through the roof and petrol is on average over $2. Everything is going up, including food and groceries. But this Prime Minister, this Treasurer and those opposite say, 'Fifteen dollars a week—job done.'

This is their problem. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer can try and spin their way out of it, but the Australian people know that this government does not have a plan to address the cost of living, because they're living it every day. Every sitting week in parliament, I'll get to my feet on a PMB, an MPI or another government motion where they're talking about how great they are and the amazing job they've done for the Australian people. That's not what the Australian people are feeling. Maybe the Prime Minister has stopped listening. Maybe the Treasurer has stopped listening. But I haven't stopped listening to my community. I'll continue to share their stories in this House so their voices are heard, and maybe one day those opposite will stand up in caucus and actually have the courage to criticise the Prime Minister and Treasurer and tell them that it's not working, because that's what you should be doing when you're a backbencher in a government—holding them to account. But every media report tells us that not one backbench member opposite raises any questions or issues in caucus.

I'm going to share Bec's story today. I asked her what her biggest issue is, and her reply was this:

Cost of living. We are a young family with two primary school age children. My husband works full-time and I work 30 hours a week. It is so hard to pay for school fees, after-school activities, school excursions, plus all the household bills: a mortgage, petrol, public transport costs. We are a single car family due to cost. We can't afford to get our heating fixed, so we're struggling through winter without heating and I know we aren't the only family struggling.

I could spend hours sharing stories from my constituents, and many on this side could and will. Those opposite move motions patting themselves on the back about how their No. 1 priority is cost-of-living pressure. Well, it's not their priority, because for 18 months the Prime Minister didn't talk about the cost of living at all. For the last six months he's talked about the stage 3 tax cuts ad nauseum, $15 a week, like it's going to solve the problem. He could have acted last year and given Bec and her family and everyone in the community of Casey an extra $1,500, but they let that legislation lapse. And, when you criticise them for it, they say, 'It's not our fault; it was already legislated'—just like stage 3. If you're going to backflip on stage 3, you can backflip on the low-income offset. (Time expired)

Tania Lawrence (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Every taxpayer in Hasluck and around Australia is now receiving the Albanese government's tax cuts. A worker on the average wage of around $73,000 will have a tax cut of $1,504. Members opposite—particularly the member for Casey—ummed and ahed about these tax cuts and really did not want to support them. Only after some time, realising they would have to say no to tax cuts for the people in their own electorates, did they get behind and support this measure.

I was pleased when these tax cuts were announced but not surprised, as they are part of a consistent attitude on the part of the Albanese government to provide cost-of-living relief where possible, especially to those Australian families doing it tough, and in a manner that does not increase inflation. Those cost-of-living measures include energy bill relief, fee-free TAFE, cheaper child care, more bulk-billing and cheaper medicines.

Contrary to what the member for Casey said, many organisations have indeed welcomed the tax cuts; it's not just us talking to the virtues of them. Australian Council of Social Services CEO Cassandra Goldie stated:

The changes announced today are a better deal for people earning low, modest and middle incomes, including people earning under $45,000.

We are pleased the Albanese Government has listened to the community to make the package fairer.

Mark Chapman, the director of tax communications at H&R Block Australia, described the Albanese government's tax cuts as 'a welcome move given the current economic situation'. He said the wider distribution meant a useful focus on low- and middle-income taxpayers who were previously not well served by the coalition's proposed tax cuts and who have been suffering from increases in the cost of living.

Stephen Koukoulas, of Yahoo Finance, noted:

Good economics is good politics. And that is exactly what has been delivered with the revamped tax cuts to be announced by the Albanese government.

Tax cuts for all Australian workers were delivered with no net cost to the budget and with no inflationary effect. The RBA governor, Michele Bullock, stated that the tax cuts were already factored in, and that, in her opinion, monetary and fiscal policy are working the same direction.

The tax cuts are going to be more meaningful for those on lower incomes. A full-time cleaner in Midland is going to save just over $1,000; that's almost two per cent of their wage. And it isn't a one-off saving; it's a saving going forward every year. The purpose of having a progressive tax system is to ensure that those who earn more are called upon to contribute more towards government services. In a cost-of-living crisis, providing relief to those most affected by rising costs is simply good policy. As the Prime Minister and Treasurer stated more than six months ago, when circumstances change so should policy responses.

This government has done a lot for workers on lower incomes. Would the coalition ever have supported a 15 per cent pay rise for aged-care workers? No. Would the coalition ever have supported a 15 per cent pay rise for childcare workers? No. And aged-care workers and childcare workers in Hasluck and elsewhere will also benefit from the Albanese government's tax cuts. This is a government that wants to see people earn more and keep more of what they earn.

In aged care, an assistant in nursing in Midland now on a wage of around $67,000 will see a tax cut of around $1,350. It's not just assistants benefiting from that policy; it's registered nurses, enrolled nurses, assistants in nursing, personal care workers and home care workers, head chefs and cooks, and recreational activities officers. In child care, a diploma-qualified early childhood educator on $61,000 in Dayton will not only benefit from an increase in pay but keep more of what they earn too.

I was proud to be with the Prime Minister and Minister Aly at Sagewood Early Learning Dayton, in Hasluck, just a few days ago. What was going on there was good for the kiddies, although they had no idea of all the fuss happening around them! But the policy wasn't just good for the children; the pay rise was also good for the early childhood workers. It was good for workers, parents and families, the sector and the economy. It was good for the gender pay imbalance as it was good for women. It also covers out-of-school care and so benefits families of school-aged children too.

This is a government listening, understanding and seeing what needs to happen and then taking the appropriate action. That's what the tax cuts were all about too—the government responding to economic circumstances and making the necessary alterations to ensure that cost-of-living assistance was directed where it would be of most benefit. Would the coalition ever have sat back and looked at their tax policy and changed it as circumstances changed? No, they wouldn't have.

Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I begin by pointing out that the No. 1 priority of this calamitous government is not the cost of living. No. Labor have had two other priorities since May 2022: the doomed $450 million Voice to Parliament referendum and looking after the CFMEU and their union mates with radical industrial relations reform that has bulldozed the industrial relations landscape in Australia and made productivity a distant memory. Casual employment is almost extinct under Labor's changes, and the unions are coming for part-time employment too.

God help you if you are a farmer in my electorate of Mallee, or elsewhere in regional Australia, trying to find workers. Labor's tinkering with the hiring arrangements for casuals, contract, migrant and harvest labour, at the behest of their union masters, means Australians will find it very difficult to feed their families. Why? Because farmers have to shoulder the higher input costs and labour shortages, which unsurprisingly drives up the cost of food and the cost of living.

Labor are in denial about their failed policies, and now they are in a blue with the RBA about whether their spending is driving inflation. Economists have lambasted the Albanese government for denying the fact that their $315 billion in extra spending—equivalent to more than $30,000 per household and rising 16 per cent in the next two years—is all exacerbating the cost-of-living crisis. On Tuesday the RBA killed any talk of interest rate cuts by year's end, yet the Treasurer told us all we'd be seeing inflation tamed by Christmas.

On tax cuts: Australians are paying 20 per cent more income tax than they were at the election. The coalition, on the other hand, are the party of lower taxes. Labor broke their promise not to tinker with tax cuts, just like they broke their energy bill pledge for a permanent $275 relief, a promise made 97 times before the election. Even Labor's one-off $300 bill relief isn't going to all Australians. Some tenants, and those that had to go off the grid, aren't getting the $300 rebate. I've asked Minister Bowen why that is the case, and the crickets have been deafening. So much for Labor helping Australians with the cost of living.

I backed the changes to the tax cuts as soon as Labor announced them because I know people in my electorate of Mallee are struggling. Even though they're used to energy bill shock, now they face energy bill trauma. The increases have been astronomical, driven by yet another Labor experiment—gambling taxpayers' and bill payers' money on mass-scale wind turbines, blanket solar panels, 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines and unproven green hydrogen.

Victorian Labor have published a map that shrank six renewable energy zones to now just 1½ zones—one very big concentration of wind and solar infrastructure in my electorate of Mallee and one half in Wannon. Labor's zone in my electorate is well over 150 kilometres away from the windy coastline and less than 200 metres above sea level, in the Murray flood plains. Victorians are paying $620 million annually—and $200 million a year to foreign entities—for this Wild West gold rush of customer-draining energy subsidies, generating massive price hikes on their power bills.

Mallee constituent Jason Barratt from Traynors Lagoon told the Weekly Times:

How on earth are our energy prices going to be lower by handing bucketloads of money to foreign-owned companies? It doesn't make sense.

Hear, hear! Farmers like Jason and Claire Grant of Bunguluke are feeling harassed, bullied and intimidated by the tactics of energy project proponents. Claire came to my mobile office in Wycheproof during the break, with her one-year-old daughter on her knee. Claire was in tears about the behaviour of the proponents of VNI West trying to get access to her land. That is the human face, the human toll, of Labor's reckless rush to renewables and devil-may-care attitude to the cost of living. This government's No. 1 priority isn't the cost of living. (Time expired)

Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like the members for Adelaide and Wills, I acknowledge that on 1 July this year all Australian taxpayers received a tax cut under this Labor government—the end of the final countdown. But, much like the Swedish rock band Europe in 1986, this government didn't just deliver on the final countdown. Just prior to that hit single, Europe would release Rock the Night, and just a few months prior to these tax cuts the Albanese Labor government would rock the night, and you'd better believe it's right.

This government committed to bigger, better and fairer tax cuts than those slated under the old coalition government, ensuring that changes to the tax regime this financial year would benefit the majority of taxpayers and that all taxpayers would share in these benefits as well. That is 13.6 million Australians receiving a tax cut, with 11½ million benefiting from a larger tax cut than they would have received under the Liberal plan. On average, that is 11½ million Australians receiving an extra $800 a year, with their total tax cut estimated to be $1,529 on average under this Labor government.

There are people in this place who cry foul over such 'lies', devastated that this government would step in when needed to deliver cost-of-living relief to those who need it most. They would prefer legislation based on an Australia five years ago, before a once-in-a-century global pandemic and global conflict and uncertainty would put Australians under unprecedented cost-of-living pressure. Instead of living in the past like those opposite, this Labor government takes action in the present to deliver a future made in Australia.

To those who are against this notion, let me ask you: of the nearly $22,000 that the average Australian will have saved by 2035 due to these changes, would you rather that money going into your own pocket? As earners in the highest tax bracket, would you prefer the thousands of dollars every year redirected to cost-of-living relief under this Labor government to end up with you instead? That's what the Liberal plan would have resulted in. I, for one, am pleased that the money did not end up with me, because it is the 84 per cent of taxpayers with the bigger tax cut, thanks to this Labor government, who need it most.

Somehow there are representatives in this place who have said they would rather a bigger tax cut for themselves, at the expense of the everyday Aussies who elected them. One of those representatives is One Nation leader Senator Hanson, who said earlier this year on Sky News: 'I was wanting my tax cuts. I'd rather put the money in my pocket.' She was 'furious' that the situation had changed, to quote the One Nation senator again. That kind of attitude is not what Australians expect from their elected representatives, regardless of your thoughts on tax reform and wealth redistribution. It goes without saying that those who enter this building as representatives ought to work for outcomes benefitting people outside of it, rather than themselves. I am proud that our Labor government has done so—not just in delivering a tax cut for all Australian taxpayers but in establishing a better regime that ensures cost-of-living relief is received by those who need it most.

Our government's No. 1 priority is exactly as stated in the motion before the House: to tackle the cost-of-living pressures facing Australians by ensuring they earn more and keep more of what they earn. That is especially so in the northern suburbs of Adelaide, providing 91 per cent of taxpayers in the electorate of Spence—one of the most disadvantaged metropolitan areas—with a bigger tax cut, compared to the Liberals' plan. That is 67,000 people in the north who are better off under Labor than they would have been under a coalition government, with an average tax cut for all taxpayers in my electorate estimated at over $1,200. That is money in the pocket of Aussies saving lives at Lyell McEwan Hospital, money in the pocket of those working hard in the Elizabeth City Centre, and money in the pocket of staff educating our children at Gawler and District College. That is what good governments deliver. They adapt to the circumstances of the nation to deliver policy which meets the needs of the nation, and that is exactly what happened under the Albanese government on 1 July.

David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this motion. I acknowledge the comments that the previous speaker made, but if people cast their memories back—and some people speaking today weren't here when the original stage 3 tax cuts and the amended stage 3 tax cuts were announced in the last Morrison government—what wasn't acknowledged is that the low- and middle-income tax offsets, which amounted to $1,500 in the 2021-22 tax year, vanished in the first Labor budget. Lots of people came to me saying that they had put their tax return in and they were short by up to $1,500. Then they brought in tax cuts, which are now lauded, but people are still $1,500 worse off. These tax cuts are also coming at a time of stubborn inflation, which is eating away the value. They're coming with higher government spending, which is driving inflation. A lot of the jobs growth is in NDIS employment and in government related industries where it's only paid by tax dollars, rather than getting investment by people working hard and knowing that they'll keep more of it.

The original stage 3 tax cuts were far better than this. They followed on stage 1 and stage 2 that did address the low-income tax burden of people in Australia. I have one of the largest electorates with the lowest average income in the country. We don't have a high average income in my electorate; we have a lot of pensioners. Compared to the average urban city electorate, I have over 48,000 pensioners in my electorate, and we are very sensitive to how much tax we pay. But we also have people who are aspirational, who are trying to work hard and not lose all their money paying tax. We were getting rid of the whole 32 per cent tax rate, up to $200,000. That meant people who were working hard, who were happy to do overtime, to take on more responsibility, to work harder and to work longer hours were finally going to get ahead, whereas nothing in this addresses the fact that we have inflation and we have bracket creep. It hasn't addressed the fundamental structural reform. It's a one-off sugar hit that will evaporate in a couple of years—that's what people don't realise. Our tax reform passage was structurally changing the tax rates so that middle-30s tax rate would vanish until you got up to $200,000.

What else is happening at the moment? This inflation is driving up the cost of living: vegetables are up, processed goods are up, gas is up. Gas is a critical source of energy in the Australian economy, and this government is talking up gas, but, in effect, slowing down gas and shrinking it. As a result we have major shortages in the electricity market and in the manufacturing market; 44 per cent of manufacturing in this country, hey presto, relies on gas. You've got one side of the government saying, 'We want to make things in Australia.' The other side, with the environment driven focus on gas and anti-fossil-fuel policies, is shutting down manufacturing. They're quite schizoid. They don't fully understand the drivers of how manufacturing happens in this country. We are great at heavy smelting, but even that is going to become marginal and go offshore. Look at what has happened with the nickel industry in Western Australia. It's just shut down because Indonesia and places in Asia are buying our high-calorific content black coal, building more coal plants than you can poke a stick at, and driving the cost of electricity down as a result of it. Yet we are starving our manufacturing sector of gas. We need more exploration and more fuels opened up so that we can keep it here onshore and get our manufacturers relief. They're paying higher electricity prices, which is the other driver for manufacturing, and gas is essential in so many things—also for fertiliser. If we don't have gas, we don't make fertiliser in this country. If we have to import gas to make fertiliser and make plastics and all those other things—and it's very expensive at the moment. We could have bountiful, cheap gas making stuff in Australia again, but these tax cuts— (Time expired)

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next day of sitting.