Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

What a pathetic performance that was from Senator Cormann, from a pathetic government that's on the rocks. It is a government that doesn't know what it's doing, a government that doesn't have an economic plan for this country, a government that would sacrifice working families, a government that would put big business before working families. This is not just about the banks; this is about an ideological obsession from this government: if you simply cut tax jobs will be created.

Contrary to what Minister Cormann has just indicated, wages are not growing in the United States. The Canadians have done this on a couple of occasions, and the companies that benefitted from the tax cuts produced fewer jobs than companies that did not benefit from tax cuts. This is an absolute joke. This is trickle-down economics in action. How disgraceful it is that we have One Nation again doing a deal to get us into a position where trickle-down economics is what this is all about. We have seen Senator Cormann stand up here and try, in my view, in vain, to defend trickle-down economics. He put up all these propositions. We don't know what this government is doing from one day to another. We certainly do not understand where this government is going. Whether it's on climate change or on economics, this government cannot be trusted. This is a government in absolute chaos. With this government you don't know who the leader will be from one day to another, because the battle is on within this government as to who is going to be the Prime Minister of this country. The sooner we go to an election and the sooner we get it resolved the better. We need to get to a position where working people can elect a government that truly cares about them and truly looks after them, and the sooner the better.

We've heard Senator Cormann say that this is about stopping an elected government doing what the elected government has promised to do. The elected government promised to hand over $80 billion to the big end of town. We saw their party room panic today, and we just saw Senator Cormann panic on the floor of the Senate when he tried to concede and give in on what they said was something they would not do: apply differential tax rates for different companies in this country. That's exactly what they've done.