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

I just want to go to a couple of things here. Let's deal with this rant from Senator Hinch. Senator Hinch, it's got nothing to do with my accent; this is about policy. It's got nothing to do with where I come from. It's about policy and it's bad policy, and that's exactly what we are voting against here. We are voting against an $80 billion handout to the big end of town, to companies, some of them, that may not pay tax anyway. And the nonsense that we hear from Senator Cormann simply continues that argument—the argument that, if you provide tax cuts to big business, then workers will get a wage increase. It didn't happen in Canada; it didn't happen in the United States; it won't happen here. The only way workers will get a decent wage here is if we get decent industrial laws and workers can bargain effectively. That's the bottom line here.

This government are simply about looking after their mates in the big end of town. That's why they refused to have a banking royal commission. That's why they defended the banks constantly and for a long time. That is just not a proposition that the community are prepared to accept. If you want to defend, Senator Hinch—through the chair—the coalition on their key issues, you should just join the Liberal Party. You vote with them constantly. On all the key issues, you vote with the Liberal Party. You are not an independent on these issues; you are simply parroting the lines from the coalition. Just join them. Stand next time as a senator for the Liberal Party if you can get in. They are always looking for blokes. They don't do much with women so they will be okay with another bloke in there.

This is not a proposition we are prepared to agree to. We don't want Goldman Sachs to get a tax cut. We don't want the banks to get a tax cut. We don't want to give the private health funds a tax cut. We don't want to increase the executive salaries in this country, because we think the executive salaries are out of whack as it is. All this will do is fatten the wallets of the executives in this country. There will be no trickle-down to ordinary working people, absolutely no trickle-down. We take the view that there are other priorities that we, as the Labor Party, want to address—that is, to get proper funding into public schools, to make sure that we rebuild the TAFE system in this country so that we can become globally competitive in our manufacturing sector and to make sure that the health system can look after people when they need it. Yet this government wanted to hand $80 billion over to the big end of town.

We don't want to do that. We don't want to support what you are doing as a supplicant to the Liberal Party, simply pushing the line for them, trying to help them out. We don't want to do that either. We want to make sure that money in this country is spent on the priorities that are needed to build a decent society. And those priorities are the health system, the education system, looking after those that have fallen on hard times, making sure that workers can bargain effectively in this country, making sure that we deal with climate change and making sure that we deal with energy policy—energy policy that is pulling this mob apart, that has seen the demise of this government. Let's not kid ourselves—this government's gone; this government's finished. That's only epitomised by the former Minister for Home Affairs, out again this morning, from the back bench, saying that the company tax rates are dead; he will not support them.

What it looks like at the moment is that Senator Cormann's great mate, Mr Dutton, could be the next leader of the Liberal Party. Who knows what that's going to lead to. Already we're hearing that we could end up in a situation where some Nationals would split from the Liberal Party and deny supply. That would probably be a good thing. But, really, I take the view that if Malcolm Turnbull had any courage, any backbone, then what he would be doing is actually going to an election now: 'Don't have the humiliation of the extreme right—Senator Cormann's mates—knocking you off. Why don't you just go to an election now and give the public a choice about who they think should be doing the right thing?' And probably, Senator Hinch, you should actually ask whether you can stand on the Liberal Party ticket at the same time.

I take the view that there is such chaos. We've got a government which cannot do what a government should do, and that is govern. They're just not governing. They're too busy carving each other up. If you look at it this morning, not a Liberal or Nationals member have their head out of their mobile phones. They're seeing who is resigning next, where the numbers are going now and when is the next party room meeting to knock off the sitting Prime Minister. That's what's going on. This government has got no economic credibility. Senator Cormann has got no economic credibility as a minister, because his good mate, who's probably going to be the next leader, doesn't agree with his signature policy.

We are not going to hand money to big business to fatten executive salaries and do share buy-backs in this country, as has happened in Canada and the US, when we need to spend money on health, we need to spend money on education and we need to spend money on the VET system. We want a competitive economy, an economy that can actually compete with the rest of the world. That's what the focus should be on: a decent society with a strong economy. This government has got no capacity to deliver that—absolutely none. We don't even know who's going to be on the front bench. Even if we wanted to negotiate, who would we negotiate with?

Would we negotiate with Senator Cormann, with Malcolm Turnbull or with Peter Dutton? Nobody's got a clue what's going on. I think it speaks volumes that the majority in the Senate do understand that the Australian public don't want this to happen.

For Senator Hinch to stand up here and say that all Labor is doing is giving a free kick to the banks is absolute nonsense. We have been consistent in our position. We don't want the $80 billion tax cuts. Senator Hinch has been on one side, then the other side, supporting, then not supporting, saying, 'I'll do $10 billion,' then, 'I'll do $50 billion,' and then, 'I'll do $500 billion.' Who knows where Senator Hinch is going to go? You would fit in with the Liberal Party really well, because you don't know what you're doing. You've completely lost the plot and you'd fit in there pretty well. I'm sure they'd even take you on, because they're so desperate. But it would be desperation, I think, to take you on.

But this is not about personalities. This is about policies and the future of this country. The future of this country means that we have to set our priorities. Our priorities are health, education and infrastructure, and making sure we don't hand $80 billion to the big end of town and that we don't get conned. We would never be conned by the coalition, unlike some on the crossbench, who have been conned. Earlier in the piece, One Nation were going to back this because they were going to get 1,000 apprenticeships in regional Australia. We want apprenticeships in regional Australia, but you don't do it by doing a deal with the government to get an extra 1,000 apprenticeships, and then sell out health, education, infrastructure and the functioning of government. You don't do that.

We have the view that to be competitive we have to have the skills in place. We don't have the skills. We have the view that for people to actually engage in the country you need to be able to get a roof over your head. The problem we have here is that this government has cut $500 million out of support for Indigenous people around the country. They did that in 2014, under Senator Cormann. They have not renewed any support for Indigenous housing, except in the Northern Territory. It's crazy. Under Senator Cormann and this government, we've gone from the position of an austerity budget, which would have cut pensions by $80 a week over a decade. He ticked off on that. They would have made young people in this country who can't get a job survive for six months with no income. They came after family tax benefits. That austerity budget was an absolute disgrace, yet Senator Cormann thought it was so good. This economic theory, his political antenna, was that it was so good that you crack the champagne with the then Treasurer and you get out the Havana cigar and celebrate an austerity budget. We don't thing that's the right thing to do. Then the desperation kicked in—this has been a government of desperation from day one. When the desperation kicked in and they changed leader, with Malcolm Turnbull becoming the Prime Minister, we had increases to the GST. That was going to be the economic policy of the government. Then they were going to hand taxation rights to the states. I think both of them lasted about a week. Their last position was trickle-down economics—hand money to your mates at Goldman Sachs, hand money to the big banks and hand tax cuts to the private health funds, and everybody's going to be better off. It doesn't work. The theory's a bad theory, and it's only the ideologues and the extremists in the Liberal Party that think this can work. Look at what happened in the US. Look at what happened in Canada. It didn't deliver more wages. It didn't deliver more jobs. The analysis I've seen in Canada, where they gave tax cuts to the big end of town, was that actual employment increase was less in the companies that got the tax cuts at the big end than anywhere else in the country. So the theory has been disproved, not by another theory but by practical observation about what happens in the rest of the world.

Senator Cormann, to his credit, has been in here pushing his ideological obsession. He just pushes it and pushes it and argues for it—credit to him. But I just think it's the wrong thing to do, Labor think it's the wrong thing to do, the majority of this Senate think it's the wrong thing to do and now the majority of your own party think it's the wrong thing to do. You talk about wibble-wobble. Well, let me tell you: the wibble-wobble is so much that, if this government were a pushbike, you'd be on your side now with the wheels spinning. The wobble is so big that it is irrecoverable. This government is finished. This government has no economic credibility and no social credibility. You are disunited. You don't care about what's happening to working people in this country. You only care about your economic theories. You are an absolute disgrace.

Senator Hinch, you shouldn't be backing them in. You should be doing the same as I'm doing now: calling for an election so the public can make a decision on these issues. You should stop fiddling around with this government trying to get a fix for them. You should do the right thing by the Australian public and support what we're doing.