Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

'Tax cuts'—they are words that ring a very happy tune in my brain. It was actually tax that drove me to run for politics—in particular, lower and fairer taxes for all Australians.

I sit here and listen to the other side of the chamber making a big song and dance about making minor amendments to the tax act, after having been in office for two years in which we have seen the cost of living rip through the heart of hardworking Australian families. Let's do the calculations, Mr Acting Deputy President. I don't want to come in here with just bombastic rhetoric; I'll back it up with hard numbers. Say the average person on $80,000 needs, if they're lucky, $60,000 a year to live on. They earn $80,000, they pay 20,000 in tax and they've got $60,000 left over. Let's not forget that the Labor Party are going to take 12 per cent of that income, so you're almost down to $50,000. Let's settle on $50,000 a year that you need, as an individual, to live on. The inflation rate has been running at five per cent for the last two years, so now we've got an inflation rate of 10 per cent over $50,000, which means the cost of living has gone up by at least $5,000 for an individual. That is for someone who is living very frugally, I might add. Anyone with a family and a couple of children probably needs $100,000 to live on; their cost of living has gone up by $10,000. Let's just settle on $8,000 being the rise in the cost of living for the average working family. What's Anthony Albanese and the Labor Party going to return to them on an annual basis? Eight hundred dollars, $16 a week or only 10 per cent to offset the cost of living. That is an utter disgrace.

The Labor Party have had two years to deal with this. They could have kept the low- to middle-income tax offset going, the LMITO, which was worth $1,500 for people on $96,000 a year if they were really serious about helping low- to middle-income tax earners. But they didn't because Labor saved the $11 billion by withdrawing that low- to middle-income tax offset so they could get back in the black, so that Mr Chalmers, the Treasurer, could skite about getting the budget back into black. So, while the federal government's running a surplus, hardworking Australian families are at home going broke.

And it's not only the cost of living. The cost of living goes up, so does the GST. The GST is applied to most goods and services as well, so GST collections have risen. The fuel excise has risen. The alcohol excise has risen. The cigarette excise has risen. Those of you still having the odd darb every now and then—that was a long time ago; you don't see many of them anymore, and that's just as well. But let's not forget the cost of living is through the roof, and that is the key issue here. In the six months between when the Prime Minister announced the changes to the tax cuts and 30 June the cost of living will have risen by more than what this tax offset will provide. So don't be fooled by the Labor Party saying: 'Look at us. Look at this hand. We're giving you $800.' Behind their back in this other hand is somewhere between a $5,000 to $10,000 increase in the cost of living. That is the key issue here.

And what is the No. 1 driver of cost of living in this country? It has been the reckless immigration rate that went from zero throughout the COVID era back to 500,000 people a year. The Australian workforce and Australian families were recovering from the government overreach throughout COVID. Many people were locked down, locked out et cetera. They had bills to pay because they got forced to stay in a hotel for two weeks, a $10,000 bill for merely wanting to go to a wedding or to go and see one of their loved ones if those loved ones had passed away. Many families were already doing it tough, and the Labor Party somehow thinks, 'We've got to keep the economy going because the economists in the Treasury need to show that we're still growing on a growth basis.' But on a per capita basis we're getting poorer, people. And we're getting poorer because of Labor's bad economic management.

I've spoken many times before about the history of the Labor Party in the eighties and nineties and how they brought in this three-step policy. They brought in fascism in 1985 when they let the foreign banks rip. They destroyed our manufacturing sector, smashing our patriots who love to get on the tools, like any true patriot does. They introduced Marxism in 1990 when they said every child can go to university and come out brainwashed and broke and feeling sorry for themselves. And they introduced the communism piece de resistance in 1992 with superannuation, centralising $3 trillion in capital into the hands of a few industry funds, BlackRock and Vanguard. Not very democratic, and that has had a long-term impact on the productivity in this country because our secondary industries are struggling. And when our secondary industries struggle, we cannot add value to our raw materials.

And when we did open up to the capital markets in 1985, with no restraints whatsoever, foreign debt rose from $8 billion in the four major banks to $800 billion in foreign debt by 2008. That drove house prices from four times earnings to 13 times earnings; it drove two parents back to work; it drove our kids into child care; it drove our children's rankings in world education standards down the world league ladders. I've spoken to many teachers from the seventies and eighties—a great era, when I went to school—and it was well-known that Australia was world class. It had a world-class education system that has been eroded by the Marxists that have infiltrated our universities and our school sectors. And that's a shame because most teachers do a fantastic job.

But I digress. We are talking about tax cuts here and about the need to protect the individual. Of course, the Labor Party love it. As I said, this is nothing but a great big distraction from a Prime Minister who does not know how to deal with the cost of living. We know that because, straightaway after he did the tax cuts, he turned up on the weekend going to Tay Tay in Sydney. Then he got on his jet aeroplane and sprayed out a heap more carbon dioxide emissions as he flew down to see Katy Perry and Richard Pratt. 'Oh gee, it's great! I really care about the battlers as I'm flying around Australia and the world, emitting all this CO2!' The humanity of it all. The temperature has probably risen another half-degree just since he hopped on the plane over the weekend! But that is what he's doing. He has no substance, this man. He has no substance, the Prime Minister.

I say to you: what is the Labor Party going to do about increasing productivity in this country? If you want to actually increase productivity in this country, we need to empower the individuals and the families. We do that by constantly decreasing the income tax rate and starting to increase the withholding tax rate on profits sent offshore. What people don't realise is that when Paul Keating let the foreign banks come into this country in 1985, with no restrictions whatsoever on how they lent that money, the interest that we pay to those foreign banks offshore was not taxed. That's right, peeps: it is not taxed. If you look at your large tax expenditure statement, you will see that there is an exemption for withholding tax; it was worth $2.8 billion last year and it's worth $2.2 billion this year. I'm talking about section 128F and the public offer test in the 1936 Income Tax Assessment Act. We need to start taxing profits that go offshore. We need to lift the rate of tax on profits that go offshore and we need to lower the taxes on the profits that are earnt here in Australia, because there is no greater way to control your country and increase the equity in your own country than retaining your own earnings.

Paul Keating let those foreign banks in in 1985 and decided that, with the Button plan, he'd let manufacturing rip. Well, that was great! What happened with the Button plan in 1985 was that it destroyed manufacturing. Look at Victoria, once the jewel in the crown of the Liberal Party. It used to be a strong manufacturing state. It's now the jewel in the crown of the Labor Party because it's driven by universities and superannuation funds, the Marxists and the communists. There's barely a patriot left alive in Victoria. I tell you what: if the Marxism and the communism didn't get to them, thanks to those reckless policies of the Labor Party in the eighties and nineties, Dan Andrews just about beat them out of the state throughout COVID. What a disgrace!

But I digress again. We've got to come back to reforming the tax act—