Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to remind the Senate that when the Medicare levy surcharge was first introduced by the former Howard government in 1997, it was intended to apply to high-income earners, or roughly around eight per cent of single taxpayers. This measure, after 11 long years of wilful neglect by the former government, will see the levy once again applied to around about the same percentage of taxpayers for whom it was intended. This means bringing an end to the pressure placed on average-income earners in Australia by the former Howard government.

I will also take the opportunity to again remind the Senate of what Senator Ludwig said earlier today in question time. It was a statement made by Senator Simon Birmingham who has conceded that $50,000 was not a high salary. I quote: ‘It’s certainly not a high salary.’ Indeed, it is a working salary. So the thresholds which the Liberals are determined to uphold were not logical, not designed with any thought for the consequences that are now hitting people who even the Liberals admit are on working salaries.

I would also like to draw the chamber’s attention to the comments made in August 2006 by the new shadow minister for health when the then Assistant Treasurer, Mr Dutton, revealed the numbers of taxpayers who were hit by the Medicare levy surcharge and revealed that they had doubled since the introduction of the new measure in 1997. Last Wednesday, the new Leader of the Opposition also made the argument for us. In his first press conference, Mr Turnbull said:

I know what it is like to be very short of money ... I know Australians are doing it tough and some Australians, even in the years of greatest prosperity, will always do it tough.

There is a simple question to be answered here today. Do the Liberals—and we know that some do not—agree that people on $50,000 deserve a tax cut? We know some members of the parliamentary Liberal Party understand that $50,000 is an average wage and they are not the people that this levy was designed to capture. Dr Wooldridge, the former federal health minister, said that when he introduced this levy. They are not the people that this levy was supposed to apply to. The whole of the opposition in the Senate know that.

The Rudd Labor government is trying to give some tax relief to those Australians who have been caught up in the system; the Liberal Party is playing politics once again. We have seen it on the pensions and we see it now with the Medicare levy surcharge.