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

Who said it? Go back and have a look, Senator Macdonald. You had propositions going up to increase the GST. Then you had propositions going up to hand taxation back to the states. Both of those propositions did not last very long. They didn't last very long at all. Then, when those failed, what did it become? Trickle-down economics. That's what you've got at the moment. And before you got to them, you had an austerity budget in 2014 that Senator Cormann was right behind—celebrating cutting the pensions with the big, fat Havana cigar. Remember that? That's what we saw: austerity budgets cutting support mechanisms for the working poor in this country. That's what this mob were all about. They cannot be trusted on economic issues, they can't be trusted on the environment and they can't be trusted on power prices. This government are an absolute disgrace. They are a government that in absolute chaos. They are a government that have just not got it.

The sooner we get to an election where the public can once again make a determination on these issues, the better. Remember Senator Cormann during the by-elections recently? That was going to be a test of the government's tax cuts. Well, the people in Longman and the people in Braddon made their point: they did not support this. That test failed. And it was going to be a test of the Prime Minister's leadership. Well, the voters around the country in those five by-elections made a call on that as well and said that this Prime Minister should not be leading the country. So both the Prime Minister's test and Senator Cormann's test, which they set for themselves, failed.

The test this morning is in the party room of the coalition. Malcolm Turnbull nearly failed that test again, and it's only a matter of time before this Prime Minister hits the wall. So instead of going through all the contortions of who's going to be the leader and what changes you are going to make to your policies, take your policies to an election and let's give the public in this country, the citizens of this country, an opportunity to make a determination about this rabble of a government—this government that would cut social services, would cut health and would cut education.

This is a government that no-one trusts. We've got a leader who not even the coalition party room trusts. We've got a leader who is on his last legs, a Prime Minister who, in the first challenge, was almost knocked off. If the other part of this government—the National Party—had been in that party room this morning, we would have had a new Prime Minister this morning. That's exactly what would have happened, because there is huge division in this government. Why any crossbencher would give any succour to this declining, deteriorating, decaying government, I don't know. We need a proposition here that indicates that this government will go to the election and take these issues to the public. That's what we should be doing.

I will quickly ask Senator Cormann: Minister, can you confirm the cost, over the forward estimates and the medium term, of the tax cuts that we are debating today?