Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Keep it up, it is good to hear. We certainly won't be supporting stage 3, which reduces the tax bracket from 32½ per cent down to 30 per cent—a $95 billion effective tax cut for mostly wealthy Australians. In his exchange tonight with Senator Wong, Senator Cormann was right about one thing that I think we should all be very conscious of. If Labor opposes the stage 3 tax cuts here today in the Senate, will they take this to the next election? Will they commit to repealing stage 3 if they get elected to government in Australia? I think that would be transparency. That would be fair. Will you commit to repealing stage 3 if you get elected to government? That's what I would like to know and I think a lot of your voters and supporters would like to know. Will you go to the next election with a commitment to repeal stage 3 of these tax cuts? It is fine to put up in here an amendment that you know is going to go down, but nevertheless, I suspect that very soon you're going to be supporting the entire tax package.

Why are we voting here tonight on stage 3, a $90 billion tax cut, five years down the track? We've all spoken about the headwinds the economy is sailing into at the moment. No-one is denying that. Five years in any economic cycle is way beyond anyone's predictive capacity to get right. There is considerable uncertainty trying to forecast even five months out, let alone five years out. Don't forget the political imperative of this legislation. Don't forget that this legislation was brought in by the coalition just weeks before the election. This was a budget election. This is budget legislation. It is a political imperative for the coalition to have this passed tonight. Why five years out? That's a really good question to ask, especially considering the risks, and especially considering, as has been pointed out by numerous experts, the impost on any future government of having to find $158 billion in difficult times. There has been no detail as to where that money is going to come from.

The government is still sticking to this magic-pudding economics that it is going to have surpluses at the same time that it has to find $158 billion in expenditure. In my opinion, the only reason the government is locking this in now is for its base. It's locking this in now so that its base, the Liberal and National Party voters, know they're going to get their tax cuts in five years and they want the Labor Party to run the gauntlet and step up and say whether they will or won't oppose these tax cuts. 'I dare you!'—that's what this is. This is the government clearly saying to its base, 'We'll legislate this,' and it would be a very brave opposition that would repeal tax cuts once they have been legislated. This is all about securing the votes of your base, making sure you don't lose any votes to the Labor Party in the future. There is no economic rationale for committing this country to $90 billion in tax cuts that predominantly flow to high-income earners in five years time. The Grattan Institute, as I mentioned today in my speech on the second reading, said that it is extraordinary and indeed is unprecedented.

We will be supporting the Labor amendment to knock out stage 3, and we urge the Labor Party to vote against the entire package.

The CHAIR: The question is that items 2 and 4 of schedule 2 stand as printed.

The committee divided. [18:48]

(The Chair—Senator Lines)

Question agreed to.