Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

If this government was a junior cricket team, the Treasurer's nickname would be butterfingers. In every junior sporting team, whether it is cricket, netball or rugby league—whatever sport you want to nominate—there is always, unfortunately for that kid, a kid called butterfingers. In this parliament the kid called butter-fingers is the Treasurer. Every time he gets an opportunity to take a catch, he fumbles it. Think about the bank tax in particular. He was just standing there at short leg, the bank tax was a little dolly that just popped up in front of him and all he had to do was grab it. He had the support of both sides of parliament and a big chunk of the crossbench. It was a dolly and butterfingers still managed to drop the ball. We were, and are, all up for it, properly implemented. The member for McMahon was up for it. I was up for it. The member for Scullin, the member for Franklin and the member for Griffith—all of us, ready to support a bank levy to help fix the mess that those opposite have made of the budget. But in came butterfingers with the usual incompetence that he has displayed in this place every day that he has been the Treasurer. He just could not make it stick. That just goes to the startling incompetence of the Treasurer—a Treasurer who just cannot get it right. His answers in this place on the bank levy, the bank tax, this week have given us no confidence, firstly, that he even understands the $2 billion black hole in his bank tax and, secondly, that, even if he understood it, he has the competence to fix the mess that he has made of it.

The only conclusion we can reasonably reach is that the Treasurer's policy on banks amounts to a $2 billion hole in the bank levy, according to independent analysis from JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank, and a protection racket against the royal commission. On top of that—and they do not like to talk about this, but we are on to it—the big four banks, according to the Australia Institute, will pocket something like $10 billion of the $65 billion company tax cut. This is the fraud that they are trying to make people around the country believe in. They stand up there and they want to pretend that they are cracking down on the banks, but they are standing in the way of a royal commission and they are letting the big four banks trouser $10 billion of the $65 billion company tax cut—that is the sum total of their approach to the banks. And they should fess up to the Australian people that this is all an act, a charade, while they continue to give big banks the tax cut that they have in their budget.

Under this government, debacles like the bank levy have become the norm not the exception. In unpredictable times there is one certainty, and that is: if the Treasurer is involved, a debacle is not far away. Whether it was the GST or income taxes for the states or the back and forth on negative gearing and capital gains, we have seen one debacle after another, going from fanfare to farce in the usual trajectory.

As to this $2 billion hole, a $2 billion hole is a pretty remarkable thing. I remember, soon after the election, there was a hole in his budget of about $100 million, and we thought that that was bad, but boy were we wrong! This $2 billion hole in the budget is a remarkable thing, but it is also at the same time not entirely surprising because the Treasurer is involved. Everything he touches turns to custard.

No wonder we have deficit blow-outs. We have a deficit for the coming year 10 times bigger than even Joe Hockey handed down in 2014. We have got record net debt for three more years. We have got record gross debt for as far as the eye can see. We have got the AAA rating on negative watch. Despite $21 billion in new taxes, the AAA is still at risk. We have got downgrades to growth and jobs. We have got 95,000 fewer jobs forecast in this budget than the one before. We have got record underemployment. We have got workers going backwards because their wages are not even growing as fast as inflation. And whenever the Treasurer gets up here—and we all see it in question time—they all pretend to read or to do something else. There is an awkward silence that descends whenever the Treasurer is on his feet. And even the conservative commentators, the ones that they can usually rely on, have turned on him.

This is the worst combination, of an out-of-touch Prime Minister, a hapless and hopeless Treasurer and a divided and dysfunctional government—a government defining and destroying itself with its own incompetence. And the bank tax is just one example of that. In this budget, both sides are talking about fairness, but it is only our side that means it.

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