Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Materiel) Share this | Hansard source

I have been to Queensland twice in the last two weeks, Senator Furner. I have spoken to people directly affected and I am very well aware of what they think about these issues, and I do not think the Australian people, whether directly affected or not, welcome the prospect of an increased burden on their standard of living. It may be in fact that many Australian people have given up talking to those people who constantly talk about new taxes rather than talking about taking off cost-of-living and other pressures on Australian families.

Senator Polly raised the question of the other levies that were imposed during the life of the Howard government. That is a fair argument to raise: why did we support levies then when we do not support a levy in this case? Senator Polly raised, for example, the gun buyback levy and the stevedoring levy. I ask those of you who were interested in politics a decade ago to think back to those days and to what was happening in Australian politics at that time. The early years of the Howard government were characterised by very determined, serious cutting of government spending. I know, because I lived in the city where many of those spending cuts were falling. They were very serious cuts. There were no hollow logs left, there were no stones unturned, when it came to examining ways to reduce government spending. Representatives of those opposite were attacking us because we were cutting so deeply into government spending programs.

When we talked about having to impose a levy to buy back guns from the Australian community you did not argue that that was not an appropriate thing to do because you knew that there were no alternatives to cutting spending. You argued that we had already cut far too seriously at that stage. We did what we had to do because we had comprehensively addressed the question of government spending. We turned to raising a temporary levy—and it was temporary—to deal with the immediate challenge to the Australian taxpayer.

That is not the situation we find ourselves in today. You have demonstrated yet again your inability to address wasteful government spending. We on this side of the chamber have said: ‘We’ve got experience in this. We will help you deal with the problem of government spending. Come and talk to us. We will show you what to do and we will wear the political burden of dealing with wasteful spending with you. If we say this can be cut, we’ll stand beside you and take the heat for making the cuts that we recommend.’ But you cannot do that because you do not like to face up to the reality—a blindingly obvious reality, I would have thought, after three years of Labor—that your ability to spend wisely, judiciously and only as necessary to deal with the problems of the Australian community simply is not there.

So I will not today rise in this place to vote for a new tax on the Australian community. I will not increase the burden on Australians who are struggling with higher prices for power, fuel and groceries. That is not why I was elected to the Senate. There are alternatives. We have supported those alternatives, we stand by those alternatives and, until the government addresses those alternatives seriously, we on this side of the chamber will oppose new taxes on the backs of Australian people.