Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

The extraordinary irony of this is that the Labor government are so desperate to ram their tax cuts, Labor's tax cuts, through the Senate because they say it's urgent, because they say they're running out of time. Yet the tax cuts don't actually kick in until 1 July. Why are they running out of time? I'll give you one guess, and it starts with the letter 'd'; it's the Dunkley by-election on Saturday. That's the reason why Labor is so keen to ram these changes through.

They have accused the opposition of standing in the way. How ironic! This is legislation based on a mistruth that they told by telling the Australian public, over 100 times after the election and numerous times before, and even 10 times since they changed their mind, that they were going to stick with the stage 3 tax cuts. But that disappeared with the ultimate mistruth told by both the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. They commissioned Treasury to look at stage 3 tax cuts on 10 December last year.

And then, after that time, they told the Australian public that they had no plans to change that, that they were not reconsidering changes. Now it's urgent, even though the cuts don't actually kick in until 1 July. There is no urgency to this.

The opposition's position has been clear: we will not stand in the way of tax cuts for ordinary Australians; we will not stand in the way of tax cuts that will reduce the 19c in the dollar range down to 16c. We won't stand in the way of that, but that doesn't mean we condone the mistruth—that was told more than 100 times by the Prime Minister, more than 100 times by the Treasurer—that got us to where we are today. We are not standing in the way of that tax cut. Quite the opposite. In fact, when the statistics bear out how this legislation has played out in this chamber, you will see that the opposition only had nine speakers on the list. That is less than one-third of us.

We feel pretty passionately about tax cuts on this side of the chamber. Tax cuts are part of our DNA, not part of yours. You don't join the Labor Party to cut taxes. You do join the Labor Party, however, to reverse decisions of the coalition that were genuine reforms. They were real reforms that attacked pernicious bracket creep that robs your future prosperity. That's why stage 1, stage 2 and stage 3 of those tax cuts were put in place by a coalition government. This mob over here had every intention of reversing those tax cuts from day one, and now they're trying to spin it to you that Labor are the party of tax cuts. 'They're here for ordinary Australians.' That is absolute nonsense. Not only is it nonsense, but they're trying to sell it to you with $40 million for an advertising campaign on the same day that they announced $14 million for Foodbank! If they were genuine about cost-of-living relief, why would you give $14 million to Foodbank but $40 million to an advertising agency to sell their mistruth?

Nine speakers from the coalition—nine only—and yet this shameless Prime Minister has had the audacity to say it is the coalition holding up tax breaks—hardly! In fact, there have been eight speakers from the Greens, there have been four from the crossbench and there have been four from the government, desperately trying to convince themselves that tax cuts are all part of being a member of the Labor Party. What nonsense. They squirm in their seats every time they talk about it.

They would love to have given handouts like lollies, but they know it would have been inflationary. They have been sitting there looking at the coalition tax cuts that were genuine reform. They've been doing it for months. They've been doing it since before the election when they looked you in the eye and said, 'We won't change that.' They've been looking at it since the election, and more than 100 times they looked you in the eye and said: 'We have no plans to change that. Our plans haven't changed.' Then they looked you in the eye more than 10 times after they'd commissioned the work to do it and said, 'We're not reconsidering our position.' This is a shameless government that is now delivering Labor tax cuts on the basis of a mistruth. There is no doubt about that. And now they're perpetuating that mistruth by saying that the coalition are trying to hold it up. What nonsense.

Nine coalition speakers, eight from the Greens, four from the crossbench and four from Labor themselves. When they tell you that we're trying to hold up a tax cut, don't believe it for a second. Check the facts because, quite frankly, this Prime Minister's integrity is nowhere to be seen. He has sold it to you—