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

That was a lacklustre question time, if ever there was one, from the government for vested interests. Our questions this afternoon were about the issues that are important to the Australian people in relation to the cost of living: interest rates, taxation policy and superannuation policy. These are the things that impact Australians.

To hear Senator Pratt say that these are not the issues that impact the Australian people is actually quite offensive. The reality is that interest rates are stubbornly high in Australia because there is a massive inflation problem in this country which comparable nations are not having to deal with. Inflation is running so high because of public sector spending. Labor can't say no to their favourite vested interests. They keep on spending taxpayer funds, which is making the inflation problem so much worse, and households and small businesses are getting smashed. It is outrageous for Dr Chalmers, the Treasurer, to say that the Reserve Bank is smashing the Australian people. It is him and his government, through their lacklustre fiscal policy, who are smashing the Australian people.

Taxes are up. That is also eroding the household budgets of the Australian people. One of the things that this parliament will live to regret is the reinsertion of a tax bracket that was abolished by the last parliament. Who would have believed we would turn back the clock and put a tax bracket back in place? That that has happened has locked in bracket creep in the long term. There will be more and more bracket creep and Commonwealth budgets will be riding high on stealing people's income to pay for surpluses and the like here in Canberra.

The government is offering nothing for small business—absolutely nothing. There is nothing in relation to cutting regulation or taxes or doing things like accelerated depreciation. It is no wonder that business investment is flatlining and the economy is turning sour. The government could do things like cut regulation and taxes, and until they do that, I fear we are heading for the rocks. The central charge against this government is that it is a government for vested interests. It only works hard for the unions and the special interests like the super funds and can't bring itself to work hard on inflation or on things like housing.

But the other part of this very revealing question time was that the government is against choice. On the question on paid parental leave, it was very clear that the government thinks it's a bad idea for new parents to be given access to their own money and they want it locked away for 40 years in a superannuation fund. Now, anyone who has had children would know that, when you have children, you need to buy nappies. Nappies are more important than superannuation when you have children.

The idea that the government would deny people choice and access to their own money shows how paternalistic this government is and how they believe that the Australian people are too stupid to save for their own retirement. There is no rule that says the only way you can save for retirement is through the Labor Party's favourite superannuation scheme. There are other ways to do it. Australians know how to pay a mortgage. They know how to tighten the belt when the going gets hard. So the idea that the Australian people are too stupid and need to have all this paternalistic policy is, frankly, very offensive. But it is revealing that this is the character of the modern Labor Party. It has such a low view of the Australian people: that they are too stupid to save for their own retirement.

That is not our policy, nor is it our position. We think that the Australian people are smart enough to make their own judgements, and if they want to put their money into superannuation, that's fine. If they want to put their money into their own living expenses, that's fine. If they want to negatively gear to provide an investment property for someone else, that's fine. It is our view that people are smart enough to look after themselves.

So that is the choice that is coming for the Australian people next year—or maybe later this year. I assume it will be next year. It will be a choice between, on one side, a party and coalition that is in favour of empowering people to make their own judgements about their own lives and seeks to support small business and, on the other side, the Labor Party that thinks the Australian people are too stupid to make their own judgements, has no interest in helping small business to invest and to grow and is locked into a corporatist, unionist mindset such that it thinks that the function of government is to funnel money and policy in favour of special interests. This is a sickness and a cancer on the Australian polity, and it shows that Alfred Deakin was right 100 years ago when he said that Labor's problem was that it was beholden to vested interests.

Question agreed to.