Grant Chapman (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Indeed, for all Australians. While Treasurer Swan was a good little messenger boy and delivered Peter Costello’s tax cuts this year, he has made up for it by hitting Australians with a whole raft of increased taxes and charges. Australians work hard for their money. We on this side of the Senate believe that they should be rewarded for that, especially in times when Australians and particularly working families are finding it hard to make ends meet. True to Labor Party form, however, the government obviously does not agree.

Treasurer Swan is introducing new taxes to raise the cost of alcohol, to which I have already referred, motor cars, health insurance and energy. In the interests of all Australians, I plead with the Treasurer to understand that when prices go up, which is what happens when you increase taxes, it simply contributes to inflationary pressures and puts ever-increasing pressure on the working families Labor swore to protect while campaigning for their vote. How quickly they forget, once the vote was in the ballot box!

One of the most disturbing aspects of this budget is the Labor Party’s attempt to re-create class warfare in Australia by determining an arbitrary point at which Australians should not receive any assistance and, in the Treasurer’s own words, ‘can afford’ higher taxes. The Treasurer’s arbitrary point does not take account of the fact that the cost of living varies from state to state and that $150,000 in income is worth a lot less in real terms for the standard of living of a family of five than for a couple with just one child. Between the baby bonus means test and the tax on what Treasurer Swan calls ‘luxury cars’, but which seem to include such things as the Toyota Tarago, the Labor government is playing the politics of envy and pitting one group of Australians against another in a political stunt that is offensive and divisive.

While Prime Minister Rudd and Treasurer Swan are labelling any family which earns over $150,000 a year as the new rich, there are many families for whom the reality is very, very different. One such family, the Tanners, are featured in today’s AdelaideAdvertiser. Because their family income is over $150,000, Prime Minister Rudd has decided the Tanners are rich and can afford higher taxes and the removal of any government assistance.

The Tanners will no longer have access to the baby bonus, their childcare benefit is gone, they will get no more family tax benefit part B, they will miss out on tax breaks for solar panels and, had they not just purchased their new family car, they would have been hit by the hike in the luxury car tax. When the cost of private health cover inevitably rises as a result of the government’s absurd Medicare surcharge policy pushing them back into the public system, they will still have to pay the surcharge because they earn over $150,000. But that is okay, isn’t it, because Prime Minister Rudd says they are rich? Well, Wayne, Rebecca and their two children, Taylah and Jack Tanner, are experiencing a very different reality.