Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is over 18 months since the Prime Minister knocked off the member for Warringah and took the helm of the Liberal Party, promising a mature discussion on economic issues, and what an 18 months it has been! We have seen a proposal for the states to collect income tax, a huge change to state and federal fiscal relations, floated in a football field and then shot down within days. We have seen the Treasurer hint at changes to negative gearing, but only to be comprehensively shut down by the Prime Minister. We have seen the government abandon simplistic three-word slogans like 'axe the tax' in favour of nuanced, sophisticated three-word slogans like 'jobs and growth'. We have seen the government have multiple conflicting positions on the effects test, some of them, quite impressively, held simultaneously. But what we have not seen is a mature discussion about economic issues.

Given that the corporate tax cuts are the only policy that this government seems to have for stimulating growth, it seemed inevitable that the caravan of confusion and chaos would eventually visit, and now it has. There are reports on the front page of the Financial Review that the government is contemplating 'junking the vast bulk of the plan'. It does not seem that this is just made up by the journalist. The journalist goes on to say:

Business groups have become increasingly concerned at the lack of commitment and this intensified on Wednesday when Treasurer Scott Morrison refused for a third straight day to say whether the government would stick with the plan and take it to the next election …

It sounds like some people are very worried about is going on inside this government. Senator Brandis gave some very short answers to questions about the government's intention in this regard, and it remains to be seen what will actually happen to corporate tax cuts. I will wait and see what will happen. But do not get me wrong, because I would be very happy to see this government dropping this misguided policy, which we cannot afford.

But it would raise an existential question for the government: what is this government actually for? What exactly is the point of this government? What is the policy that the Prime Minister has nominated as being his greatest achievement? He said 'reforms to business tax', and when Senator Brandis was asked in this chamber just moments ago, 'What reforms are these?' what was his answer? 'The ones we have in mind.' So the reform that the Prime Minister nominated as his greatest achievement so far is a reform that the government has in mind to be undertaken in the future. There are some serious problems when the greatest achievement you can identify is one which has not actually yet occurred.

It ought to ring alarm bells in the coalition party room. What do you have after that, when the only reform you have is something that has not yet happened? You have, I guess, a commitment to the right of people to be bigots, and you also have a whole range of excuses about inaction on a whole range of subjects. We have been told you cannot have a free vote on marriage equality in the parliament, because the plebiscite was an election commitment. We have been told the government will not contemplate changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax, because it is contrary to the position they took to the election. Yet maybe, if you believe what is on the front page of the paper, the government might be contemplating a walk away from the tax cuts that were the centrepiece of their election offerings. Just this week, we have been told we cannot afford to make payments to struggling families and that people in need will have to wait longer before accessing payments they desperately need, because apparently we cannot afford to maintain our very targeted welfare system. Yet what we can afford, maybe—let's see—is a $50 billion tax cut.

We know what all these reasons and excuses for inaction are. They are just that—excuses. They are fig leaves. Like a small child that throws a tantrum, the government refuses to take ownership of its decision. It likes to say it cannot do things when the actual reason is that it does not want to. We know the truth: the only election commitments this Prime Minister cares about are the commitments he made to the right of the Liberal Party before being elected leader. The only policies we cannot afford are those that bring a cost to him in the party room. That is no way to govern, and those watching the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection might tell you that is probably no way to hold the leadership either.

Question agreed to.