Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I will also wrap up now, but I would like to say a couple of things on the record. Firstly, Senator Hanson—through you, Chair: if this is nitpicking, it is a very big nit—$4 billion dollars worth—that is sucking a lot of blood, and it needs to be picked. We are here as a house of review to review legislation. That is our job. This is $4 billion of taxpayers' money that is being given in a tax cut to the wealthiest Australians—the wealthiest 20 per cent of Australians. That means that 80 per cent of Australians miss out on this tax cut. The most updated numbers that we have from the ATO show that 2.5 million Australians will get this tax cut and nine million will miss out. I am guessing, Senator Hanson—through you, Acting Deputy Chair, that most of those live in the bush and are your 'forgotten people'. They have certainly been forgotten here today. You have failed your first test. You have turned your back on them, and the Greens have stood in here and stood up for low-income Australians who we felt should have been given the assistance, instead of the wealthiest Australians.

I do believe that what we are debating here today—and Adam Bandt, MP, from the other house, said this as well—this is a political strategy we are dealing with today. This is all about votes. This is not an economic strategy. It is not targeted. I have not been able to get answers on any detail associated with this particular initiative to my satisfaction. For example, why didn't the government move to reduce bracket creep for those on the $37,000 upwards to $80,000 bracket? What is the impact of this bill beyond the forward estimates? What is the differential impact of this bill on regional Australia versus those in the cities? We have inequality between the bush and our cities, and this is going to make it worse because it is mostly high income earners in the cities who will be getting this tax cut, not those in the bush. What wage growth estimations did the government use to work out how many people will be impacted by the changes? There are no answers.

Are wages growing faster for those in the $80,000 to $87,000 range than for those on lower incomes? There are no answers. Presumably these would have been important things to determine before you gave the tax cut to people earning over $80,000. Has the government modelled the impact of these tax cuts specifically? Senator Cormann has talked about the overall package, and he has tabled something today. But it had no detail at all—no granular detail, a term that both he and Senator Xenophon have used. What evidence will we have that this will trickle down? Did the government look at taxation adjustments? There are all these things. Why are women in this country still being discriminated against in the sense that they are going to largely miss out on the benefits of these tax cuts versus men. What are we doing to tackle inequality?

I am disappointed with the answers I have got here today, and I think it is a real shame that we are giving away $4 billion worth of taxpayers' money and not targeting the really serious issues we should be targeting as senators, and that is tackling inequality in this country.

Bill agreed to.

Bill reported without amendments; report adopted.