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

I thank Senator Williams for cutting short his contribution to allow me to say a couple of words on this grab for cash bill that the Labor Party has introduced. This bill, the Treasury Legislation Amendment (Unclaimed Money and Other Measures) Bill 2012, is so typical of the Labor Party. They have run out of money and they have promised this mythical surplus of $1.2 or $1.3 billion and half of it is going to come from stealing someone else's money. That is in effect what this bill does: it creates a legal ability to steal money that has been saved by others as a contribution towards their retirement. I concede that if you can come back later and show that they have taken your money they will give it back, but the Labor government would not worry too much about that because they know there is absolutely no way they will be on the treasury benches after the next election to have to find the money to pay back.

Isn't this bill so typical of the dishonesty of this Labor government led by a Prime Minister who cannot tell the truth? I say that and remind everyone yet again, if it needs reminding, that this government is led by a Prime Minister who a few days before the last election, knowing that unless she told a lie she would not have got the votes, promised the Australian people she would not introduce a carbon tax. As soon as she was elected on the strength of that promise, the promise to the Australian people that she would not do this, she turned around and introduced the carbon tax dishonestly. This bill is in that same vein. Indeed, over the six months from 31 December this year to 30 June next year the government intends to raise more than $760 million in additional revenue from measures in this bill the principle of which is stealing, as I say, $555 million of someone else's money.

Wouldn't you think that a bill with these implications—not just on the honesty of this government, not just on their financial mismanagement but on the fact that it is taking someone else's money—would be debated? I know that there are many more speakers who would like to speak on this bill but they are not going to have the opportunity because the Greens political party have joined their mates in the Labor Party to curtail debate on this important legislation. It would appear that this will be the second time today that I am going to be stopped from talking. I do not want to sound like I am taking it personally—