Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this matter of public importance:

The Abbott-Turnbull Government's plan to increase the rate of GST and broaden its base.

I also would like to make a few comments about the contribution by Senator McKenzie when she talked about caring for Australian people who are on low incomes—not her words but basically the intent of her contribution. This is a senator who is part of the government that wants to strip thousands of dollars from family tax benefits—from Australian families. They wanted to introduce a GP tax after they said there would be no changes to health. This is the same senator who said she was concerned about the cost of living for Australians, and yet they did not take it to the election. They were not brave enough to take these things to the election.

They also wanted to take money off pensioners. They ripped billions of dollars from the states and territories through health and education. And, of course, there was the classic: no money for unemployed people for six months. Living on fresh air! This is the caring attitude from those opposite. After listening to that contribution, you would not believe that these were their policies. There was denial in the chamber today and it was coming from Senator McKenzie. Most of those measures came out of the government's disastrous first budget. I think that, if the government senators were honest, they would agree that it was actually a disastrous first budget and that, if these measures had actually got through the Senate, it would be a sorry state of affairs for those vulnerable people that we just heard the senator say she actually cared about.

She also talked about the legislation that came through during the former Labor government. Of course, most of our legislation did get through. That was in spite of the slogan driven opposition of Mr Abbott at the time. They did not enunciate their policies at all. We all remember that they were on a unity ticket on basically everything that the Labor Party stood for. They never enunciated any policy. They never told people what they were going to do, so why should we trust them now when some of them say there is no proposal for a GST and some of them say everything is on the table? They cannot be trusted and have actually shown that.

Some people have been interested in the serialised feature that has been running in The Sydney Morning Herald which tells of a meeting between Mr Abbott, Mr Hockey and Treasury officials just before the leadership change. This was a meeting to discuss tax reform prior to the leadership change. On the agenda, according to the article, was a clear path to increase the GST from 10 to 15 per cent. It was also proposed to cut the top—