Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Sorry, Chair. I was at the Senate economics committee this morning and Senator Sherry was not there. He is grasping at straws to try and cover up the fact that today the Labor Party are the doormats of this piece of legislation and they do not have the courage or the conviction to be relevant. They have a chance today to be relevant. There are few times that come up where they have a chance to be relevant. Today they have one, and they are terrified of it—absolutely terrified of getting a win. They said it had nothing to do with overseas equity funds. A summary of the new law says that it ‘narrows the range of assets which may be subject to Australian capital gains tax to Australian real property held directly by foreign residents’. That means that for everything else, they do not pay capital gains tax. It has a hell of a lot to do with foreign ownership and overseas equity funds.

As I was saying before, there is a $100 billion bid at the moment for Home Depot in the United States. I will show you what that would buy in Australia today. If that $100 billion were in Australia it would buy Boral, Coles, Qantas and Westpac. I think the Australian workers might want to know about that. I think they might be interested in the fact that an overseas equity fund could come in, break up all those companies and cut costs. How are they going to do that? By moving jobs overseas and selling for a profit. Alternatively, with a change of legislation, they could buy a couple of banks. That could be on the shopping list. There is an abundance of money around and the Labor Party is completely hiding from reality.

I know they find it an affront, because they have put themselves in their own wedge. Today they had the chance to be relevant. Today there was a chance for Senator Sherry and Mr Rudd to go to the front door and say, ‘Today we stood up to stop discrimination against Australians.’ They just gave, in the previous amendment, a relevant argument on why you should avoid discrimination, but they are about to vote now for discrimination against Australia as a nation. The only people who will pay tax on a lot of these assets after this is finished will be Australian citizens—not overseas citizens, Australian citizens. So if you want to invest in Coles and you do not want to pay tax, the smartest thing for you to do is to move to New Zealand, because as a foreign investor you will not have to pay. Little old Mr and Mrs Smith in Cabramatta or Ipswich will have to pay, but you will not if you are from overseas. What sort of genius devised that idea?

To try to cover this up with a whole range of venting of the spleen and a whole raft of rhetoric about the National Party and all that just says absolutely clearly that you know you are in the wrong—you know this is a bit of a sticky situation. When you are in a sticky situation, instead of saying: ‘Yes, we are discriminating against Australians when we pass this; we acknowledge that. We acknowledge that today we are going to be the doormats of this policy. We’re quite happy to roll over and let you tickle our tummy because it makes us feel good. To cover that up, what we are going to do is launch an attack on the National Party and start saying how they are the doormats because they stood up.’ They stood up when you rolled over. It defies logic.

I cannot work it out. Every time the Labor Party gets a chance to be relevant, they just run for cover. They are terrified of relevance. They are terrified of being strong. They are terrified of identifying an issue and standing behind it. They live in this void of rhetoric and waffle of ‘bridges too far’, ‘forks in the road’ and ‘ladders of opportunity’. They cannot work out why the Australian people have not grabbed onto them—it is because they think they are nothing. They are a mystery wrapped up in an enigma inside a riddle. That is the policy framework of the Labor Party.

Today the Labor Party have a chance to be relevant. Today they have a chance to make a clear statement that Australians should not be discriminated against. Today they have a chance to protect against the overt, as they say, ‘barbarians at the gate’—that is on the front page of the Fin Reviewand what is happening with these overseas equity funds. They have a chance to make a statement that will definitely protect Australian jobs. And it is their own words. With the possible sale of Qantas, they came out and said, ‘All these jobs are going to be moved overseas; we must stop it.’ And one of the major investors is an overseas equity fund. So they had to stop this overseas equity fund. Today, what absolute hypocrites they are. Today they are turbocharging the problem. You have to be held to account.

My appeal to the fourth estate is not for me—goodness gracious me: I am quite happy, looking forward to a holiday—it is to get coverage on this issue. And you know that. It was an issue brought up by Senator Murray. We need coverage of this issue. It has been completely devoid of proper explanation in the media. I think that is unhelpful. I think a lot of Australians would like to have a comment on this, would like to be brought into the loop. Today the Labor Party could have brought the Australian people into the loop. Today the Labor Party could have taken the Australian people into their confidence and brought them into the loop on this subject. But they are not. They are hiding it from the Australian people. But for what reason? That is the question: for what reason? The question that we always have to ask is: what is in it for them today? There is the real riddle, mystery and enigma. It stands against logic. It stands against everything else they say.

I have no problems if you want to give foreigners capital gains tax exemption. But there is one absolute caveat on it: you must give it to Australians as well. You cannot have one rule for one and another rule for the other. You must look after Australians first. You acknowledge—and you should acknowledge—and I know that in your heart of hearts you understand absolutely the ramifications of an overheating of the market with these overseas equity funds, who are not interested in investing in building up assets; they are investing in breaking assets up. They are investing in apportioning and breaking up the assets.

If we were to have that $100 billion investment in Australia today, just think of the ramifications for our share market and of the items that could be removed from our own share market. This is something that we have to address, and this is why I am waving a flag on this issue and saying: have a good think about it before you go down this path.

It could have been done today. We could have made a difference today. The last thing that is going to happen before this Christmas break is that the Labor Party are going to say that, at the fork in the road, they chose to follow, not to think. The fork in the road is no more than a roadside diner at which the first item on the menu is curried favour. That is what this is about.

I do not know how the Labor Party are going to explain this. I put this challenge out: I look forward to Mr Rudd or Senator Sherry going out and explaining to someone in the local bowling club what the relevance is of discriminating against Australians. Why would that make them believe that the Labor Party are a reasonable alternative government? People are just going to see you as hypocrites. They are going to see you as pathetic and as not having the spine to stand up. People are going to see you as not even being able to get the proper facts.

When Senator Sherry said ‘on balance’ that suggested that he had the facts from Treasury, but he does not. Senator Sherry is flying this spaceship of his blind. You do not have the facts. No-one has the facts. The Treasury cannot provide the facts. In fact, to our own questions they cannot provide the facts, so you certainly do not have them.

I will just help you out with some simple maths. I will take the top two companies, Coles and Boral. If Coles is worth $16 billion, they will get about a 20 per cent mark-up, so I suggest that to make it worth while there would be about $3.2 billion on the break-up. If it is worth $3.2 billion, times 30 per cent—that is what we compromised on—$960 million would be compromised in that transaction. And the Labor Party are willing to swallow the $50 million or $65 million argument.

Let us take the next company. Boral is worth about $4 billion or $5 billion. Let us say it is worth $5 billion and you get a 20 per cent mark-up—say, $2 billion. That would mean $300 million is going to be compromised on that one. I do not understand how the Labor Party get around the numbers. I do not think you have even looked at them. I do not think you have considered them. I do not think that you have sat down with a pen and, on the back of an envelope, worked out what the hell you are talking about.

This is a flow of money that is just going to wander off—possibly to the US treasury. What do we do then? What do we do when, just in those two transactions alone, we have $1¼ billion? Are we going to go over and knock on the door and ask for help or maybe get a loan from them? Is that what the Labor Party is intending to do? Is that part of the brilliant economic plan that Mr Rudd is going to announce to us from the fork in the road?

Is this the sort of vestibule of genius that we now have laid out before us in this brave new plan? There is a chance for the Labor Party to make a statement and to be relevant. You know this is cutting through and you know, deep down in the pit of your stomach, that this stinks. But the Labor Party are about to vote for it. So your numbers are wrong, your facts are wrong, your analogy is wrong, your rhetoric is useless and your vision is stupid. And we are about to see, in front of all of Australia, the sort of delivery that we can expect from new Labor.