Mike Symon (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is with some interest that I start my contribution to this debate tonight. I have been listening to the opposition talking about luxury car tax and I really do find it sticks in the craw a little bit when you think that there are people prepared to spend more on a car than many people can afford to spend on a house. Then they talk to their representatives in this place and say, ‘That is outrageous. We shouldn’t have to pay that tax because people who earn less should be supporting us.’ And this seems to come across time and time again from the opposition—that those who do not have much are actually there as a resource for those that have plenty. Why should working families and working people pay welfare to millionaires? Why does a millionaire need a baby bonus to help with the cost of raising a child? And why does a millionaire family need family tax benefit to help them with their day-to-day living expenses? It is just not right.

This is a complete reversal—a perverse reversal—of what welfare should be. Welfare should be for those who need it. It should not be for those who just want it in order to get a bit extra. Welfare is to help people out so that no-one actually ends up on the bones of their backsides on the street. Welfare is something we take for granted in Australia, and many people have to rely on it because of their circumstances. But those people not in straitened circumstances—who can look after themselves very nicely; who may own several properties; who may go out and buy a Porsche, a Rolls-Royce, a Lotus or any other nice expensive car—are not the sorts of people who need welfare. Those on the other side are quite happy to stick up for that system. But I do not find it very attractive at all. I think welfare should go to those who do not have a choice. They need help from the rest of the people in Australia. That is why we have a government and that is why there is a redistribution of income: so that those at the bottom do have a chance and do have a choice to lift themselves up from where they are—or at least to survive on the level that they are at—rather than in an American type system where they end up with nothing and where there is an incarceration rate of nearly two per cent of the adult population. And why do they have that there? Because their welfare system has huge holes in it. Over there, after a few months on welfare, unemployment benefits cease. That is not something that happens in Australia. We look after people in this country and I think that is a very good thing. But there should be limits on who is looked after and when those types of benefits are delivered.

Money that is taken from taxes such as the luxury car tax or other high-end taxes—even those like the progression of income tax scales—is rightly put to social uses. It is rightly put into the Australian economy to build infrastructure and to build our skills base. These sorts of things did not happen during the Howard government. It strikes me that the opposition were not only the party of Work Choices and the party that took away workers’ rights and conditions. At the same time they were taking away more in another form—that is, tax cuts would go to the wealthy, who would get a huge advantage at budget time, whilst those on lower incomes would get a small advantage. So in each Howard budget, if your income had been high before, it was certainly a whole lot higher afterwards in percentage terms than for those at the bottom of the income scale.

Finally the cycle is over. Those at the top can survive quite well. Working families who are struggling to make ends meet week by week on wages that are under pressure from cost of living—and that comes from all angles whether it be rent or mortgage stress, petrol prices, or the cost of groceries or bringing up children—do need support. But, again, it comes back to what your income and circumstances are. To see that this budget has actually brought some of that back down to earth is a wonderful thing. As a Labor member, I am proud to be able to stand here and say that. It is not something I thought I would see for many years before I came to this place, because at one time I thought that maybe we were going to be stuck with a Howard Liberal government for a long, long time. And we were. But that is now over and I am happy to see that fairness has started to return to this House. (Time expired)

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