Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Home Ownership) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given to questions without notice (1), (2) and (4) asked today.

I know question time was some time ago. The main point I want to make in taking note of these answers is that the budget this week is a budget which has paid off the big unions and the major donors and favourite fellow travellers of the government. When I say that this is a government for vested interests, this is perhaps the best example of it. You see nothing for small business. You see efforts to reintroduce unionisation at universities, and, of course, you see the endless gravy train of more and more super for their best friends at the super funds.

This is part of a classic Labor approach to budget management. You've seen the essential desire of the government to increase taxation because spending is so high. While we see a surplus this year, we see deficits as far as the eye can see in the out years of the budget. So the government has made a conscious decision to spend up big over the course of these forward estimates. Of course, the people who will pay the bill are the people of Australia because the government has no money of its own. The only money the government has is the taxation it levies on its citizens.

We've already seen new taxes on superannuation and franking credits. We've also seen higher taxes in the personal income tax space. Who would have thought when we started this parliament almost two years ago that we would reinsert a tax bracket of 37c? We've gone back to the future. Who could have believed that? The reality is that the reinsertion of the 37c threshold means that bracket creep is back. Bracket creep is now a permanent feature of the Australian tax system. That is going to be one of the legacies of this bad government. We have gone back to the future, in a DeLorean perhaps, to a system where you have a 37c threshold and, if you do an extra shift or if you do a second job, you are on the hook for more tax. Bracket creep is back. That is going to be one of the shocking economic legacies of this government, which has unwound one of the very few reforms of the past few years. We are living in an era where governments have very low ambition. One of the only reforms to the tax system in recent years was the removal of that tax threshold, and now it is back. So you see more taxes to pay for the big spending.

You also see an obsession with these boondoggle schemes and funds: the National Reconstruction Fund, the Housing Australia Future Fund and now the made in Australia fund. All of these funds are chock full of union people—on their boards—so they can pay off, in financial terms, their favoured vested interests. It's a government for vested interests in terms of policy, and a government for vested interests in terms of the payment of taxpayer funds to special interests. That is the reality of this budget.

The other big failure is housing. It's hugely disappointing. We see pages and pages in Budget Paper No. 1 on Labor's housing policy. What is the centrepiece of Labor's housing policy? The centrepiece is this hilarious commitment to 1.2 million new houses, a commitment which has been laughed at by the Premier of New South Wales, Chris Minns, who says that New South Wales will never meet its allocation of houses. Furthermore, Budget Paper No. 1 says clearly that the government will never meet the target of 1.2 million new houses. This is a huge fail on supply, and their only policy on the demand side is a policy called Help to Buy, a friendless scheme already run by the states and territories that no-one wants. The reason no-one wants it is that people don't want the government to own their house. No-one wants to co-own their house with the government. That is not the Australian way. That is not the Australian dream. The Labor Party is putting the Australian dream to death, as it governs for its special interests. It is a government for vested interests, which is killing the Australian dream.