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

By Senator Lambie and the senators from Centre Alliance. They are trashing 100 years of Australia's proudly progressive taxation system for their moment in the spotlight. I say to Centre Alliance, who aren't in the chamber here today: don't you support funding for schools and hospitals? Don't you support pensions? Don't you support infrastructure? Doing all of that in the name of reducing gas prices, some promise on the never-never—you fell for that?

Centre Alliance like to position themselves as a party of the Centre. When you support an anti-union agenda, when you get behind tax cuts for big companies—as they did in the previous parliament—when you support greater media concentration and when you lock in $158 billion in tax cuts that flow to people on high incomes, there's nothing centrist about that. That is the neoliberal hard-right agenda of the Liberal Party, and maybe you should consider where you sit in this chamber.

It's remarkable that this legislation has never even gone off for an inquiry. The house of review will be moving today to send this legislation off for inquiry. Nick Xenophon must be turning in his solicitor's office right now at the thought that procedural fairness is being thwarted by his parliamentary team. It's one of the most significant pieces of economic reform in this country and it has not even gone before a thorough Senate inquiry. If you're in Mayo, the seat currently held by Centre Alliance, just 2.1 per cent of that community earn over $180,000 and yet they will be the greatest beneficiaries of stage 3 of this tax cut—$30 billion flowing to the top two per cent of that electorate.

I very rarely give credit to Senator Hanson. We have very few things in common, but even Senator Hanson sees that only 1.8 per cent of regional Queenslanders earn above $180,000 and that the Prime Minister's electorate of Cook has as many people earning $180,000 as the regional Queensland seats of Maranoa, Dawson and Capricornia combined. As for Senator Lambie: if you live in Bass or in Braddon and you're earning over $180,000, you're in the top one per cent of people. And $30 billion from this package flows to only one per cent of people in those electorates—the electorates that she purports to represent.

In exchange for giving millionaires tax cuts, schools and hospitals in Tasmania will be starved of funds. Support for veterans, who Senator Lambie purports to represent—money will be ripped out of the budget, money that could support people again. Every aspect of public investment is on the chopping block because of this disastrous decision. Of course, Scott Morrison—