Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

It is very important that we return some honesty and truthfulness to the debate before the chamber on the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood and Cyclone Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Temporary Flood and Cyclone Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011. From listening to the Labor and Greens senators speaking, you would think that all compassion lies with them and that, for some reason, the opposition does not want to help in the flood and cyclone recovery in my state and in the recovery from the natural calamities that have happened in other states. Nothing could be further from the truth. The coalition has shown time and time again that it is prepared to assist with these natural and, indeed, other calamities. You have only to go back as recently as Cyclone Larry that hit and devastated Innisfail four or five years ago to see the extent of the support given by the then Commonwealth government—a scheme of support which, gratefully I say, has been replicated by the current government in relation to Cyclone Yasi.

But this is not about compassion and helping people. You would think from the speeches in this debate from Labor and the Greens—and the last speaker in this debate was a typical example when she talked about people’s belongings floating down the flooded Brisbane River; people who have lost their futures—if you did not look at this closely that the money being raised here was going to go to those people. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Greens and the Labor Party would have you believe that it is all about helping out people. This money, when it is raised, will go to wasteful profligate state governments that have spent everything they have ever had—state governments that are technically broke, like the government of Queensland. It will go to them to prop up the Queensland government for things which the Queensland government should have been planning for in any case and should have insured against. This is not about helping particular individuals, as the fine speeches and the fine words of Labor and Greens speakers would have you believe. It is all about propping up state Labor governments that could not afford to do the work that they should have expected.

This bill is dishonest in itself. It is called the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood and Cyclone Reconstruction Levy) Bill. I will guarantee that this will be anything but temporary. It is simply another tax for a political party running a government that cannot handle money and cannot handle spending. If this is a temporary levy for a major natural disaster that is happening this year, what are we going to do for the major natural disaster which will happen next year and the following year and the following year? We all know, living in this wonderful country of Australia, that every year there will be at least one major natural disaster. You can bet your last dollar that the Labor Party will come to us this time next year and say, ‘Oh, we have another major disaster in a part of Australia. We will just continue this temporary levy for the Queensland floods and Cyclone Yasi on for another year.’ Because there will be disasters every year, because there have been disasters every year since European settlement—and I am sure a long time before that as well—governments put money aside as they expect to have to look after recoveries from these natural disasters.

I have already tabled in the Senate a list of natural disasters which have occurred since the mid-1800s. Was there, in any of those, a special levy arranged by the government to pay for reconstruction of infrastructure in the states or territories where those disasters occurred? Of course there was not. How much did we spend on drought relief? How much have we spent on Cyclone Larry alone? How much have we spent on floods and fires? We have spent billions and billions of dollars, and so we should. Governments are expected to anticipate and plan properly for this expenditure. But because the Labor government has wasted so much of its money on so many failed schemes, because it has wasted the $20 billion surplus handed over to it when it got into government, we now find the Labor government has no money left and so have to put on a new tax to help pay for recovery, a new tax called the mining tax and a new carbon tax simply to try to compensate for its profligate spending.

I listened with some interest to Senator Bob Brown and Senator Milne railing against the carbon producers—the coal companies, big mining companies, those huge multinational companies that send all of their profits overseas and therefore they have to be bad; that is the sort of thing that you used to get from eastern Europe and in communist Russia in years gone by—but, for all this concern about letting these multinational companies work, let us have a look at this bill. It says in clause 4-10(1), ‘Temporary flood and cyclone reconstruction levy’:

(1)

You must pay extra income tax ... for the 2011-12 financial year if:

(a)

you are an individual; and

(b)

your taxable income—

is such and such. Can I see anywhere here in this bill where these multinational mining companies that are making these huge profits and sending all the money offshore are mentioned? Surely, Senator Ludlam, interject and tell me that I am wrong, that I have misread it.