Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Cormann) to questions without notice asked by Senators Kitching and Chisholm today relating to company tax cuts.

Senator Cormann had an opportunity in question time today to make clear how this government's corporate tax cuts are fair to the voters in Braddon when only 10 companies headquartered in Braddon will benefit from these further tax cuts. Further, he had the opportunity to confirm that only three companies headquartered in Longman will benefit from these corporate tax cuts.

We know that the numbers are that limited in these electorates because the Australian Bureau of Statistics has provided, clearly, that information—that these proposed company tax cuts, to 2023, according to the ABS, will benefit only a tiny handful of businesses in these electorates. Why? Because the majority of the company tax cuts that this government wants to put forward will benefit, of course, Malcolm Turnbull's own electorate—the Prime Minister's own electorate. Under this Prime Minister's out-of-touch tax cuts, the biggest benefits go to the biggest cities in the country. They do not go to regional Australia. They do not go to electorates like Braddon and Longman.

Senator Cormann, instead of actually answering the question, which he had the opportunity to do in question time, simply carried on with his usual rhetoric saying he is looking after working families across Australia. Well, Senator Cormann, just because you say it does not make it true. In fact, I almost felt that Senator Cormann's nose was growing as he gave answers to these questions in question time! The people of Braddon and the people of Longman know very clearly how untrue they were, because they know—they're living in those electorates—that there aren't these big businesses that simply are going to be benefiting from these unfair company tax cuts.

This morning the government actually had a chance to debate their company tax legislation. But no, they wanted more time to do deals with the crossbench, to do deals with Senator Hanson, in the hope that Senator Hanson would flip-flop around again—or, as Senator Cormann says so often, 'wibble wobble, wibble wobble'. They were hoping that would happen and they could continue to do deals to get her over the line.

Let's face it, that is something that we on this side of the chamber are very concerned about. That is why we called these bills on for debate—to find out where this senator stands. The Australian people should be very concerned that she may again just sell out the voters of Australia, the voters of Longman, through her flip-flopping on this.

Let's be very clear: these bills are about an $80 billion big business tax handout at a time when we have a budget deficit, at a time when we have penalty rates being cut, at a time when we have schools and hospitals being cut in Australia and at a time when we have wages that are failing to keep up with inflation. Seventeen billion dollars of these $80 billion worth of tax cuts go to banks alone—just go to banks alone. This is what this government wants to do. It wants to prop up the banks. This is all while the banks are going through a royal commission, as we know, and all while we have disclosure going on through that process. At the very same time that royal commission is going on this government wants to bring legislation in this place to give banks $17 billion worth of tax cuts. That same amount the government is cutting from schools and every other part of our education system, when we look at TAFE and the rest. How unfair and unaffordable are these tax cuts?

The Australian people know very clearly how out of touch this government is. It doesn't just have to be Senator Cormann trying to convince Australians on that front, because the economists are doing it very well themselves as well. These are economists such as Saul Eslake and Goldman Sachs, who have pointed out that the vast majority of these tax cuts will go into the pockets of overseas investors and banks. That is absolutely unfair and unaffordable. That is why, day in, day out in my home state of Tasmania, Justine Keay, our candidate for Braddon, is pointing that out very much to the voters of Braddon. They understand how unfair this is. (Time expired)