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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Cormann) to questions without notice asked by Senators Brown and Ketter today relating to tax policy.

I would like to start with the response that Senator Cormann gave to a question that I asked in question time today. In response to my quote from former Treasurer Joe Hockey, it does appear that Senator Cormann threw Mr Hockey under the bus again. He is leaving the chamber smiling, but he could not even bring himself to agree with his former friend, his former smoking partner, that negative gearing should be skewed towards new housing so that there is an incentive to add to the housing stock rather than an incentive to speculate on existing property.

The responses by Senator Cormann were pathetic, to say the least. His response on behalf of the government basically had no relevance to the questions that I was asking. He also fell in line with Mr Turnbull in whipping up a scare campaign—something that Mr Turnbull said that he would not lower himself to do. They have failed to see what economists in Australia are saying about the Labor Party's policy on negative gearing.

We had in The Examiner today a column written by Saul Eslake, a nationally acclaimed economist who lives in Tasmania. He wrote:

So let's not kid ourselves that negative gearing is something that is widely used by 'average Australians' to secure their retirement. It's something that is used by Australia's wealthiest households to reduce their tax debts.

There is no doubt that people up and down the income chain utilise negative gearing, but the simple fact is that surgeons get 100 times the tax benefit from negative gearing that cleaners do. They are the simple facts.

Saul Eslake's opinion piece in today's Examiner is based on fact; it is not based on the furphies that now seem to be part of the scare campaign that the government is running against negative gearing. Economist after economist, as well as the former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett, is dismayed about the tack that this government is taking. The simple fact is that surgeons get 100 times the tax benefit from negative gearing that cleaners do.

Another question that was asked in question time today was about bracket creep, and, of course, we have differing views from Senator Cormann and Mr Morrison on it. What that demonstrates is that this government is all at sea on its plan for the economy and for tax reform. They have no plan. They have been in government for 2½ years and they have no plan. We have Mr Morrison so at sea that he had to blame Mr Abbott of doing nothing, but, of course, Mr Abbott had to give him a slap over that and deservedly so. They only started to look at their plan five months ago.

Mr Morrison's inept performance at the Press Club was excruciating—I felt bad for him, but I can tell you that Senator Cormann was sitting in the audience and his face told the whole story. He was just appalled by the lack of substance in Mr Morrison's performance. Mr Morrison rightly got the rounds of the table when he went out to the media—and no-one backed him in—because Mr Morrison started talking about unicorns and pixies. It was very hard to follow what Mr Morrison was trying to convey to the community. What he managed to convey was that this government has no plan—(Time expired)