Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am delighted to contribute to the so-called double taxation debate that Senator Polley has so keenly engaged in. If one takes the very first principle that Prime Minister Turnbull mentioned when he spoke to the premiers and chief ministers, it was that there would be no net increase in taxation across the nation and there would be the opportunity for tax sharing. Senator Polley says this is an initiative of the coalition and something that Prime Minister Turnbull thought up. Let me go back to the year 1991. I do not know if Senator Polley was interested in politics in those days, but I will tell her in a moment who the Prime Minister of the day was. There was a premiers and chief ministers meeting in Adelaide on 21 November 1991 and a historic agreement was struck. The communique to emerge from the meeting is significant because of who the meeting was chaired by. Here is a guessing competition. Who was the Prime Minister in 1991, Senator Polley—through you, Mr Acting Deputy President? Anyone? Senator Smith, would you know? It was Bob Hawke. There were eight premiers and chief ministers at the meeting, six of them Labor. I will tell you who these luminaries of the Labor Party were: Kirner from Victoria, Bannon from South Australia, Lawrence from our state of WA, Goss from Queensland, Field from Tasmania and Follett from the ACT. Do you know what they did? The communique said that all leaders:

… reiterated their support for a national income tax sharing scheme based on providing States and Territories with access to the personal income tax base …

Furthermore, they agreed on a figure of six per cent—through you, Mr Acting Deputy President, to Senator Polley—as being appropriate, 'without impinging on fiscal equalisation arrangements'. Finally, they also agreed, under the leadership of then Labor Prime Minister Mr Bob Hawke, that the proposal was not just revenue neutral but economically sustainable. How wonderful. It was 1942, as you know, Mr Acting Deputy President, when the states gave up their capacity for income taxing.

Incidentally, let me go on and tell you what happened. I should, shouldn't I? What do you think happened to this breakthrough agreement by Prime Minister Hawke and six Labor premiers and chief ministers? I ask those in the gallery—through you, Mr Acting Deputy President. It is a bit like Q&A. One month later, it got mothballed when Paul Keating, whose infamous centralist tendencies would never permit him to grant greater autonomy to the states, seized Hawke's job. What do you think happened to that thought bubble? It got scuppered. That was the end of it. It was finished because of Paul Keating, the great centralist. 'He who holds the gold makes the rules', and Keating wanted to hold the gold and make the rules.

What did Prime Minister Turnbull do? He went to the premiers and chief ministers and to the people of Australia and said, 'Let's engage in an economic debate and let's put everything on the table.' How amazing that the people of Australia would be given an opportunity to actually have everything on the table for discussion. Fortunately, as a result of decisions made in this place last night, you, the people of Australia, on 2 July are going to get an opportunity to decide whether you want the future economic, social and industrial management of this country to be run by the coalition or to be run by that rabble on the other side.

In the few minutes left to me, I do want to comment on issues associated with higher education. I have said in this place so often, and I say it again, through you, Mr Acting Deputy President, to Senator Kim Carr: Professor Paul Johnson, the vice-chancellor of UWA, one of the Group of Eight universities, has said that a four-year agriculture degree will cost $16,000 a year. Hands up all those who know what four times 16 is. It amounts to $64,000. Perhaps Senator Carr is an example. He ought to go back and get a calculator, because four $16,000s do not make $100,000 degrees. And it is not to the credit of people in this place to continually tell lies about those degrees.

Let me also tell you what this coalition government, through Andrew Robb, the then trade minister, has achieved: free trade agreements with three of our major trading partner countries—Japan, China and Korea—and also, of course, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. As one who has had a keen interest in the higher education sector, and one who was an academic at Curtin University in Western Australia and at the University of California and at the University of Kentucky, I can say to you: the value to the university sector of the free trade agreements and the TPP will be measured in billions for years to come.