Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Senator O'Neil doesn't like hearing about it, but it's a housing tax. Who's that going to hit? It is going to hit renters fundamentally more than it will hit anyone else under a Shorten Labor government, if they were ever to come to office.

Family trusts, of course, will cop a hit, because now Labor says that family trusts are somehow illegitimate—they are wrong somehow. There's no legitimate purpose; therefore. the Labor Party will hit them. And they're going to increase income tax. They're going to hit the aspirational people—people who are doing reasonably well. Yes, they've worked very hard. To get to $180,000 a year, yes, they work hard. They're doing okay, some of them, but I wouldn't say that they're mega-wealthy and that they are this class of people who should be brought down, as the Labor Party would like to see, but they're going to increase their tax, as well. That's going to be the income tax increase.

Who knows what other taxes they've got? We do know about their electricity tax—their 50 per cent renewables target. What do you think's going to happen there? That's going to be a tax on every household and every business. That's the electricity tax that's coming back under Labor. And when they restore the ABCC, that will be an infrastructure tax. When you allow the corrupt unions to own the workplace again—to own our building sites again—not only do you support their corrupt business model, but that's an infrastructure tax. We know what it does: it pushes up the cost of roads, it pushes up the cost of schools and it pushes up the cost of hospitals. So, infrastructure that Australians need, that they expect their governments to deliver, becomes more expensive. The only way you can deliver it under Labor's policies is to borrow more money to do it, or deliver less infrastructure. You don't get as many roads, you don't get the rail, you don't get the schools and you don't get the airports, or you get substandard versions of them. This is the picture of life that Bill Shorten is offering the Australian people.

Senator O'Neill interjecting—

No wonder Senator Gallagher is a little sensitive and the Labor Party are a little bit sensitive about being called out on their policies. We will stop criticising your policies and comparing them to socialists past when you have policies that aren't socialist, when you have policies that are about lifting people up.

I want to devote the short time I've got left to the policies that Bill Shorten has said he has for growing the economy—it will be very short! I'm going to do it in the next 15 seconds. I'm going to hurry; I'm going to do it. He was asked, 'What are you going to do to grow the economy?' He said, 'Well, I support public transport.' There you go! That is the Labor Party's— (Time expired)