Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Of the so-called surplus that the Labor Party promised in the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook in October 2012, three-quarters was supposed to come from the rapid raid by the Gillard Labor government on people's bank accounts and superannuation accounts. It is an absolute disgrace. People should not be exposed to that sort of stress. Now, of course, this lady has to chase ASIC and try and get her money back. ASIC do not even know whether the money has arrived with them yet. It is going to be a convoluted process for them to get their money back. People across Australia should not be forced to deal with ASIC to chase their own money just because this government were so desperate to get their hands on it, to create the illusion of an early surplus that was never going to be. It is disgraceful and makes me angry.

Over the first six months of this year, the government were aiming to raise $760 million in additional revenue, including $555 million from so-called 'lost' super, from bank accounts of either individuals or companies. By the way, there was no upper limit to how much money people could lose out of their bank account—no upper limit at all. The government's shamelessly dishonest spin was that this was all about reuniting people with their own money more quickly. Well, that ain't happening in practice. People across Australia are losing money out of their accounts as a result of legislation passed by this government and, quite frankly, they are finding it very hard to get reunited with their own money. The government should be ashamed of themselves.

Under pressure during the consideration of the unclaimed money bill, the government advised the Senate Standing Committee on Economics of its intention that interest on this unclaimed money would be exempt from tax. But, again, because they are so incompetent, because they are so chaotic, so dysfunctional and so divided, they could not get it together in time to put that in the legislation, given the rushed way they put it through. So the government has to make yet another fix to yet another bad piece of legislation which was rushed through the Senate in a fashion not dissimilar to the approach to the current legislation.

There is a whole range of other schedules. I do not think we are going to have time to get through all of them, which is quite inappropriate, but that is just the way things are under this government at present, as it pursues its last hurrah before the election. Schedule 2 is meant to improve consistency across the fringe benefits tax law and reduce the complexity of the law, but that is invariably not what happens with this government. Schedule 3 is intended to allow participants in the Sustainable Rural Water Use and Infrastructure Program to choose to make payments received under the program free of income tax, including capital gains tax. The coalition has previously been supportive of this change, which was originally announced in February 2011. Why it has taken until now to pass it we do not understand, but we continue to support it.

Schedule 4 was scrapped. Schedules 5 and 6 we will seek to excise for the reasons I have explained. Now I have run out of time. (Time expired)