James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers to all questions asked by Coalition senators.

What we saw in question time today was a Labor Party who have fundamentally failed to understand that they've broken their trust with the Australian people. We've seen them break one promise, and we know they're going to break more promises. If they're going to go after people with $3 million in their super account, what's to stop them going after people with $250,000 in their super account? That is what this is all about. It is about the fundamental breach of trust between a political party elected into office and those who voted for them.

The Labor Party are forgetting the main principle of super. It's not the Labor Party's money. It's not the government's money. It's not Canberra's money. It's your money. It's money that you've put away. It's money that your employer has put away on your behalf so you can have a safe retirement. Over the last few weeks, the Labor Party, who went to the last election promising one thing, have now swooped in like a bunch of angry magpies, wanting to steal people's money from them. That's what this debate is about. It is about the Labor Party taking your money from you. Before the election, the now Prime Minister specifically ruled out any changes to the super system; that is what the Prime Minister said. Treasurer Chalmers said the same thing: 'There are not going to be any changes to taxes; there will be no tax rises.' But they are doubling the tax on people's super accounts.

Treasurer Chalmers has inherited an eccentric economic legacy. He is a child of Paul Keating. Treasurer Chalmers did his PhD on Paul Keating, who most famously broke a promise. Before an election, Keating said that tax cuts would be 'l-a-w law' tax cuts, and then he broke that promise. Treasurer Chalmers then went on to great heights and worked for that other great Labor Treasurer, Wayne Swan. He was his deputy chief of staff and then chief of staff. This is the person who is now in charge of Australia's finances. Treasurer Chalmers is the love child of Paul Keating and Wayne Swan. If that doesn't scare you, then the full realisation that Labor are coming after your super accounts should scare you.

What a Labor minister has said in relation to your super accounts is that it's honey—just think about that. I'm a big fan of Winnie-the-Pooh, and Winnie-the-Pooh is a great fan of honey, but that's Winnie-the-Pooh's honey. How dare the Labor Party treat your money—the money that you've worked so hard for—as their money, their honey, to be given away, to be put where they want it? Leave people's money alone. I don't know anyone who has millions of dollars in their super account, but—guess what—good on them! They've worked so hard for it. It's not like they won Gold Lotto and went, 'Yippee, I've got $3 million in my bank account!' These people worked for it. What the Labor government is saying to these Australians is, 'We're taking that money off you.'

What should concern you even more—and I'll repeat myself here because certain people in this building are hard of hearing; they've probably come from the shallow end of the gene pool and don't understand basic economics—is that, if they're going to come for super accounts with $3 million, they're going to come for super accounts with $250,000 or $300,000. Once they break a promise, they'll break other promises. The strongest message that has come out of today's question time is that Labor have no shame whatsoever about breaking promises and they have no shame about taking your money—money that you and your family have worked so hard for. But the mob over there, the mob on the Left side of politics, don't understand that, because they've never had a real job. These are the people who've never worked on a farm, have never worked in a business. These people have worked in the Public Service—and by the way, good on people who work in the Public Service, except when you end up on that side, being that bunch of economic vandals who are destroying Australians' retirements.