Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a member of the coalition government and as someone who will be affected by the temporary budget repair levy, I want to very briefly speak today in favour of this levy. It is part of our government asking everyone to pull their weight in repairing the mess, the $667 billion debt, that was left to us by the previous Labor government. It was common during Senate estimates, which was held recently, you will remember, Mr Acting Deputy President Bernardi, for opposition and Greens members of this Senate to roll their eyes and groan when the economic mess created by the previous government was mentioned, as though you could somehow wish it away, as though it were not a reality, as though it did not happen. It did happen, and I for one—and I know many others—will be pleased to have the opportunity to contribute towards fixing it.

This levy will raise $3 billion over the time that it is in place. It will affect about 400,000 taxpayers. I am somewhat bemused by the attitude of the Greens, who on the one hand want to have every promise of the government maintained but on the other hand suggest that this levy should be made permanent and think that that is somehow okay. They not only want it made permanent but want to ensure that there are no changes to the top income tax bracket. I would have thought, given their views on the subject, that they might even think that increasing it might not be a bad thing to do.

I continue to be distressed by the views around the top end of town, the big end of town, and the idea that somehow we can take every benefit away from every company in Australia, we can increase the taxes on every company in Australia and somehow, miraculously, they are still going to generate more jobs. I am sorry; that is just not how it works. What we need to do to fix the economic mess that we have is to give companies, businesses, individuals, every opportunity to grow their businesses so that they can employ more people, so that they can take the chance on employing someone who has perhaps been unemployed for a couple of years—because it is a chance and it requires extra support to employ someone in that situation. Labor should not suggest that somehow there is this endless pot of money in the big end of town, although I guess we should not be surprised about, because Labor thought the same of Treasury—that it was just an endless pot of money. There is not an endless pot of money. It is by supporting the employers of Australia that we will repair our economy.

This is, in my view, a good, honest and worthwhile contribution that can be made by the top individual income earners of Australia towards repairing the damage that has been done. I commend this bill to the house.