Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian Greens will support these amendments because, for the reasons that Senator Murray has put forward so cogently, they deserve support. I have foreshadowed an amendment not simply to defer but to cancel these tax cuts. We very strongly believe that the billions of dollars going to the rich in the form of tax cuts—which, as Senator Murray has said, could well be inflationary and actually lead to an increase in interest rates, so that the money gets taken off people a little way down the line—ought to be going to providing services for the nation or, alternatively, to increasing pensions for those million-plus people in Australia who are living on or below the poverty line because of the inadequate pension system in this country. It is remarkable to us that we have a Labor government that is pouring billions into tax cuts for the rich in this economic climate but cannot find money for the poorest people in our society. Even if the government were not to allocate these billions to raising the pension by from $30 to $100 a week, it ought to allocate the money into the other areas where the government has a lot to do: tackling climate change and improving the health system and the education outcomes in Australia.

This is a knee-jerk policy reaction. Prime Minister Howard announced $31 billion or so in tax cuts over a number of years at the start of the last election campaign. On the Monday or Tuesday of that week, the press gallery went into orbit about that—there were some exceptions but not too many—and insisted that Kevin Rudd had to respond, as Leader of the Opposition, by the end of the week or he would be a dead duck. He did respond on the Friday. He said, ‘Me too; I’ll tick off.’ We are essentially dealing here with a Howard government proposal, which of course is going to service the big end of town, but, in so doing, it will take billions of dollars away from the much more important job of ensuring that pensioners, carers and people who are in real need in this country are assisted. As Senator Murray says, there is a much stronger basis for argument for tax cuts for people on low income and middle income, though the Greens believe that the billions being spent there could be much better targeted to providing services in this egalitarian nation of ours. However, we support the amendments.