Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have realised something that has been a crystal clear awakening for me, and that is that the term 'fairness' when used by those on the other side of the chamber is just another euphemism for socialism. Everything they have talked about to do with fairness in the tax debate has been about taking more money from taxpayers and giving that money to those who do not pay tax. Everything about their debate has been about increasing the revenue for government, not about cutting programs that are wasteful or ending the money shuffle. There has been no proposed radical reform of the tax system. It has simply been about getting more from fewer people. That is the Labor way; it is the socialist way—'We will continue to take and spend your money until there is none left.'

You do not make everyone wealthier and lift a tide that all boats can float on by penalising those who are producing in the economy. We need to provide assistance and incentives for people to get out there and work. We need to provide assistance and incentives for people to get out there and start businesses, to employ and to invest. You do not do that by taxing people more.

The gerrymandering that would go on according to the plan of those on the other side is designed to make it fair for them, who have all benefited from lucrative superannuation investment schemes and no thresholds and who have all benefited from negative gearing and the tax fairness that came in under a coalition government previously. But they are going to penalise future generations even more than they have. Let's remember this: there was no debt in this country seven years ago. The mob on the other side spent hundreds of billions of dollars that they did not have that our children—your children and my children—and successive generations of children are going to be forced to repay. They implemented policies that have wasted tens of billions of dollars that we are still living with the legacy of today.

But, having said that, I want to thank Senator Moore for introducing this motion. It is not because of the wording—I understand there are spurious political games being played there—but because it provides an opportunity for those on this side of the chamber to talk about this and to prove that we are the thinkers. We are the people who are contemplating sincere and serious reform of the tax act.

So for the benefit of those on the other side, rather than apportion any ideas to the government, I am going to outline briefly the Bernardi tax plan. This is an opportunity to provide incentives and true equity and fairness to the Australian people. Let's start with the inequality between single-income families and dual-income families. On a $100,000 income, there is about a $10,000 tax disparity. That means that if you are sole breadwinner in your family earning $100,000 you are going to pay $10,000 or so more tax than if two people are out there working. On top of that, if the two people who are out there working have children, they are going to be benefiting from the childcare rebate and a whole bunch of other rebates and assistance. The inequality continues to grow.

So why don't we do something different? Why don't we say a single-income family with a dependent spouse or dependent children can benefit from multiple tax-free thresholds—maybe one for their spouse and half a one each for their child? This is about ending the money shuffle. It is about shrinking the size of government and making it truly fairer for individuals and families to determine what they want to spend their money on and get government out of it, because everything government touches turns to custard. Demonstrations of that have abounded again and again.

If you want to get more radical—and the aristocratic socialists, the merchant bankers, would like this—you could look at something like having a massively high tax-free threshold.

Senator Whish-Wilson interjecting—

Of course, there would be no subsidies for vineyards or anything like that under that scheme, Senator Whish-Wilson. But, nonetheless, you could have a very high tax-free threshold so that anyone earning under, say, $50,000 a year did not pay any tax. Principally they do not now because of the money shuffle and rebates. On top of that, you could have a flat rate of tax for those earning between $50,000 and, say, $100,000 of 20c or 25c in the dollar and maybe a 30c threshold after that. You could lower the company tax rate to the flat rate of 25c in the dollar, and in compensation for these sorts of cuts you could abolish personal deductions, subsidies and rebates and all the things that increase the size of government and decrease the size of the private sector. As I said before, everything the government tries to subsidise or infiltrate or influence goes bad.

We need to confront the demons that are within the Australian economy at the moment. That is simply that government is too big. Australians do not need more taxes. They need tax cuts. If you want to grow your economy you have to provide the incentive, and the incentives come from rewarding people for their efforts, rewarding people for taking risks. If you had a flat rate of tax after $50,000 or something, as I have demonstrated, you would not need capital gains tax exemptions or concessions, because people would be paying 20c or 25c in the dollar for every dollar, whether it came from a capital gain, speculation or from income.

That sort of stuff, of course, is anathema to the socialists on the other side. It is anathema to them because it stops them having control over what people want to do for themselves. They love being able to pull the levers and strings and say, 'We will give you a bit of that, if you do this over there.' They are channelling their inner Bernie Sanders. Senator Dastyari gives me the thumbs up because I have no doubt that Senator Dastyari, in his heart, is a true socialist. He is cuddling up there to Senator Cameron, which is a creepy, creepy thing to do, but, nonetheless, they are two peas in a pod when it comes to socialism and taxes.