Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Chalmers said:

It makes no sense to support the third tranche which comes in five years away from now and overwhelmingly favours those who are least likely to spend it in the economy.

He went on to say: 'What I don't accept is that tax cuts that they're proposing five years down the track, which flow overwhelmingly to people who are least likely to spend in the economy—that is obviously a con job for the government to pretend that they would have any impact on the slowing economy today.' That is all absolutely correct. And we absolutely support those statements, which is why we hope that the Labor Party will join us in making a clear and unequivocal statement that it will repeal stage 3 of these tax cuts at the next election.

We must get an unambiguous and clear commitment that stage 3 of these tax cuts will be repealed. They are enriching the wealthiest in our society. We know our budget can't afford it. We've heard comment after comment from members of the opposition who have said absolutely clearly that stage 3 of these tax cuts do not warrant support, and we must address it. They've seen the same costings as the rest of us. They've seen the Grattan Institute and the Australia Institute research that shows that these tax cuts overwhelmingly benefit wealthy Australians and that men benefit twice as much as women, entrenching gender inequality even further. Again, I say: don't take it just from the Greens; take it from former senator Doug Cameron, who said that Labor should back the first tranche of tax cuts but that anything further was 'a con job'. He went on to say:

We must not capitulate to News Corp and the big end of town by becoming Liberal-lite.

We couldn't have said it any more clearly ourselves.

When I hear 'tax cuts', I hear cuts to hospitals, I hear cuts to education, I hear cuts to schools, I hear cuts to pension, I hear cuts to Newstart. That's what tax cuts are a euphemism for. Of course there are alternatives. We'll move later today to make sure that people on low incomes do get some support. They'll get more cash in their pockets not by adjusting tax thresholds and not by flattening our tax system but by ensuring that they get some support, that we increase Newstart by $75 a week, that we raise the funding for our public schools, that we introduce Medicare-funded dental care and that we build half a million affordable homes. We will do all of those things because we do see the tax system as a powerful tool for addressing economic inequality in Australia. We cannot cave in to this trickle-down, neoliberal agenda. We, as a nation, have fought hard to maintain a progressive taxation system as a means of addressing turbocharged economic inequality. It's getting worse, and a decision of this parliament to unwind the tax system in one of the most significant changes that has ever come before this place would be a huge mistake.

Let me finish by saying the Greens unequivocally oppose this tax package. The argument that somehow stage 3 doesn't take effect for a number of years and therefore we need to pass it and have some chance of reversing it is a furphy and it's a nonsense. If this package does pass with the support of Centre Alliance and Senator Lambie, then we must commit to repealing it. There are alternatives. Those alternatives will make Australia a fairer, more decent society. We must resist at every opportunity the path towards Trump's America, where our tax system is flattened, where economic inequality is worse and where our essential public services are run down.