Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Hansard source

Members of the opposition find these numbers uncomfortable, unpalatable and unpleasant, but there is one thing which they cannot say. They cannot deny that these figures are definitely accurate.

Turning to the economic legacy which has necessitated the significant electoral promises being honoured by the Rudd government, championed by the Treasurer, let us look at foreign debt. Members of the opposition think that foreign debt is the amount of change you leave in the charity bin in business class on the Qantas plane when you come back from London. In 1996 foreign debt stood at $194 billion. What did the now opposition do in their lazy, tax-grazing years of government? They saw an increase in foreign debt—$610 billion in 2007. These people were playing the Las Vegas roulette wheels: ‘Come in spinner.’ When Labor was last in power our foreign debt was 37.4 per cent. But under the indolent hand, the dead hand, of coalition economic management, foreign debt blew out to 57.3 per cent of GDP. Again, members of the opposition think that foreign debt is what you pay on a foreign car. These are significant numbers and they reflect the poor legacy of the opposition’s economic management.

If we do not want to talk about the proportion that the tax bandits of the coalition used to take and we do not want to talk about the foreign debt of the frequent flyer miles constructed by the opposition, let us talk about labour productivity growth. Now that is a shameful number. In the last six years of coalition rule—indeed ‘rule’ as an active sort of a word, as opposed to a more passive term like ‘sleep’ or ‘nano-nap time economically’—productivity grew by only two per cent. Multifactor productivity grew by only 0.7 per cent per annum. Yet in the previous decade, when we saw the accomplishments of the previous Labor government, productivity grew at 2.6 per cent per annum—contrasted with the very sorry and lamentable two per cent under the coalition. Multifactor productivity stood at 1.6 per cent—contrasted with the lazy, indolent, nirvana, lotus-eating years of the coalition government.

If we want to look at poor numbers and debate the mantle of tax reform, there is a university in the Netherlands which the former Treasurer was fond of quoting—and I apologise to the Dutch speakers in the parliament for my pronunciation—the University of Groningen and its Conference Board. Their analysis revealed that Australia’s productivity as a percentage of United States productivity, which was viewed as best practice, was 80 per cent in 1990. Yet by 1998 it had grown to 88 per cent, courtesy of the range of reforms of the Labor government, including tax reform. Looking at it as a proportion of the OECD, under the Labor administration productivity grew from 93 per cent to 100 per cent. Surely these Everest-like accomplishments would have been repeated by the coalition government—if we believed some of the opposition speakers. But what we discover is not a climb. We are not moving up in the game of snakes and ladders—we do not have a ladder when the coalition is in government—we have actually slipped on the snake and gone backwards, from 88 per cent to 82 per cent. Courtesy of the coalition when they left government, they got us back to where we were in 1992. And that takes some doing.

By contrast, what we see here is that the government is putting forward tax cuts, which were an electoral promise. Labor knows that it has to implement the promise. It is part of a responsible plan of fiscal discipline which we are seeing in a range of policies the Prime Minister has outlined. These tax cuts are necessary. They are what we need to restore at least some of the balance in the Australian economy because, let’s face it, the tax bandits of the coalition, on some Pancho Villa like raid into the Australian taxpayers’ pocket, increased their tax take. What we have to do is return it to the people, as opposed to the fishing hall of fame.

This is part of improving the overall benefit to workers, who suffered so poorly under those Work Choices laws—again, another 300-pound gorilla the coalition still does not know whether to pat or shoot. These tax cuts have to compensate, in part, for the Liberal legacy of inflation. Labor is committed to restraining inflation. The tax take of the federal government during the coalition years has been at too high a level and Labor is going to give some of it back.

We will not allow the opposition to misrepresent what they did not do regarding tax reform. It was more a case of tax passivity or of the manx cat sitting on the rock outside in the sun, casually licking its paws, grabbing more of the taxpayers’ milk and not doing much to deserve it. These taxes will help Australian workers and working families ensure that they are okay in life. It is certainly the case that a number of factors improve the quality of life for Australian families and workers in general. One is the proportion of tax they pay. Others include the income they have to spend, their wages and their superannuation. All these items add up to having a fair and decent standard of living. This tax cut legislation is one part of the package. It helps compensate for frustrations that people have about wage rises and also inflation. This tax cut legislation is an effective mechanism to help people. These tax cuts in fact provide incentive for people to participate in the economy.

When we look at what the coalition actually say about tax reform, we discover that they have a history, not, as the member for Cook would suggest, of being reformers, but perhaps of being reformers with a little ‘r’. ‘Reform’ means to clean things up, to remedy, to renew, to uplift, to repair, to rehabilitate, to correct or to change. When I have a look at the legacy which these tax bandits left by their laziness and lack of interest in the Australian economy, I see they are not tax reformers; they are tax tinkerers. They are tinkerers, because in their 11 years they could never manage the real changes in the Australian economy.

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