Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

The Rudd Labor government is a secretive government; it is not an open and transparent government. The Rudd Labor government is a tricky government which selectively leaks, according to its political self-interest, parts of reports whenever it suits it. This is a government that is no longer governing in the national interest; it is a government that is focused on its political self-interest. And we are now being told that the Henry review report is going to be released before the budget. The government has had it for 85 days, and we are now being told it is going to be released before the budget. But was that a spontaneous decision? Was that as a result of the Prime Minister’s instinct for openness and transparency? No, it was not. The Prime Minister had to be shamed into it. The Prime Minister had to be shamed into a concession when even his senior cabinet colleagues could see that he was going down the wrong path. They tapped him on the shoulder and they said, ‘Kevin, we should really release this before the budget.’ Finally there was a degree of concession.

But who knows in what form it is going to be put out there, because we now have a plethora of reviews across government that are being kept secret, whether it is the National Broadband Network implementation study, which is being kept secret, whether it is the underlying information on the economic modelling of the government’s flawed emissions trading scheme—its $120 billion great big new tax on everything—or whether it is reports into when the government was first told about serious safety risks for workers involved in the home insulation fiasco. They are just some of the reports that the government is keeping secret, and of course before the election we were told that this was going to be a new era of openness and transparency.

The Rudd Labor government, like Labor governments before it, is a high-taxing, high-spending, high-borrowing government. This government did not wait for the economic downturn to start ratcheting up taxing and spending. In its first budget, well before the global economic downturn, the Rudd Labor government increased taxes by $20 billion. That included the $3.1 billion tax grab on alcopops, the $2½ billion tax grab on the North West Shelf project in Western Australia. It also included student taxes. You really have to wonder: what does this government have against young people?

Here we are, 85 days from when the government received the Henry tax review report, and we still have not seen it. What do they have to hide? What is their secret tax plan? Are they planning to remove the capital gains tax discount? Are they planning to increase capital gains tax? Are they planning to increase the GST? We know that the Prime Minister wants to steal 30 per cent of the GST from the states, but do they want to increase the rate? Do they want to increase the Medicare levy? Do they want to introduce death taxes? Do they want to introduce a resource rent tax, which is going to be another attack on states like Western Australia? Do they want to get rid of negative gearing? Who knows, because this secretive and tricky government are keeping it secret. This is a government of all spin, no substance. They are focused on a pre-election political strategy to time the release of this report to minimise any fall out for themselves in terms of their re-election chances. All talk, no action; all spin, no substance.

Contrast this with us. Tony Abbott and the coalition put forward a proposal for a national paid parental leave scheme which is fully funded. We were very transparent about how we would raise the funds to pay for it. We are out there, open in the public domain. Contrast that with Labor’s secret plan. If Labor, in the lead-up to the next election, were to come out and rule out taxes, I would say to the Australian people: you cannot trust a word they are saying. Just look at what they said before the last election. Before the last election Kevin Rudd and Nicola Roxon gave the most emphatic promise that they would retain the existing private health insurance rebates. What happened after the next election? We know what happened after the election: they have now tried twice to ram legislation through this Senate which would reduce or scrap altogether private health insurance rebates for millions of Australian, a measure which would be bad for our health system and bad for 11 million privately insured Australians. We know that this government has a track record of saying one thing before an election and doing another after the election. Clearly, Australians cannot believe one single word that this government says about taxes. (Time expired)