Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

Numerologists—that is probably not a bad idea! The shadow minister for finance might take you up on that. I understand, as we all do, that you get different perspectives from economists. There are people on both ends of any debate in the economics profession, but you have to take advice and form your own view on that basis. To denigrate them, as the member has done, is simply absurd.

The alternative that is put forward by the Liberal Party is across-the-board, sweeping tax cuts. I quote:

Broad and sweeping tax cuts that will increase the tax base and increase revenues.

That is courtesy of the infamous and much discredited policies of Professor Arthur Laffer, adopted by no less than George Bush Jr—not his father—which have sent the US budget into massive deficit and created a huge problem for the entire nation, not just the Obama administration. It is code for tax cuts for the wealthy, for high-income earners. It is code for: ‘Don’t target the money. Don’t try and get the money into things like construction and retail and all of the parts of the economy that naturally contract very quickly when a downturn occurs. Just spray it everywhere, particularly to the better off.’

It is also notable that part of this formulation referred to increasing the tax base. That, of course, is code for expanding the GST back to where the former government originally wanted it to be, which was on food and virtually everything. They were forced to retreat from that. It is not surprising that the shadow Treasurer has been kept in the box in the ensuing days after this performance. The shadow Treasurer has let the cat out of the bag on what the Liberal Party is really on about.

Finally, on radio a couple of weeks ago the shadow Treasurer said, ‘The first thing we would do in response to the global financial crisis, if we were in government, is revisit these proposed industrial relations laws.’ What is that code for? That is code for bringing back Work Choices. So there is a simple trifecta. The alternative from the Liberal Party to the government’s package is tax cuts for higher income earners, GST expansion and bringing back Work Choices. They are the three pillars of the traditional Liberal Party position. We know what the member for Curtin is talking about when she talks about increasing the tax base. She possibly does not know what she is talking about, but we certainly do know what she is talking about. There is a three-point plan juxtaposed against the government’s package, and that three-point plan is very straightforward. The result of that plan would be massive, indefinite budget deficits, like the United States has had, ever-mounting inequality in Australia and, of course, Your Rights at Work stripped away.

There have been a lot of comparisons made in recent times in commentary between contemporary circumstances and the 1920s and 1930s. You would have to say that the opposition are certainly doing their bit for this because they are seeking to return Australia to the economics of Stanley Melbourne Bruce, the Lord Bruce of Melbourne, and to the days when the natural rulers of the country wore spats, top hats, waistcoats and all those kinds of things. They were blind to human suffering, indifferent to job losses, indifferent to business failures, fixated with the elegant virtues of the free market no matter what the cost and, of course, horrified at the prospect of governments intervening to invest for the future of the nation.

There is no better person to do a latter-day impersonation of Stanley Melbourne Bruce than the Leader of the Opposition. There is no more appropriate person. I think that the ordinary working person in Australia will be asking themselves today: after all the carnage on Wall Street, all the destruction of value and all the people who have lost their jobs and their life savings courtesy of the behaviour of investment bankers, is Australia ready to have an investment banker as Prime Minister? I would say probably not. That may be a question that the Australian people get the chance to decide towards the end of next year, if the member for Wentworth lasts as Liberal leader. If the member for Higgins’s on-again, off-again flirtation with the prospect of Liberal leadership goes into recession yet again, that will be something that we will see in due course.

This is something that I think lies underneath the position that the Liberal Party have taken today. What it means in effect is that we will see the attempted blocking of a government plan that will result, if that blocking succeeds, in more pain for working people of this nation in the face of a giant economic challenge, more people losing their jobs, more people losing their homes and more people losing their businesses. It will mean that there will be no investment in rebuilding our schools across the nation, particularly our primary schools. It will mean that the effort to insulate our homes and to take a big step forward in collectively reducing our carbon footprint and improving our greenhouse gas emission performance will not happen. It will mean that our effort to improve social housing, to reduce homelessness and to build more accommodation will not happen. It will also mean that a vast array of small businesses, retailers and contractors will lose sales, shed staff and, in some cases, go out of business. Of course, in total, it will also mean that there will be less investment, because there will be no investment allowance for large and small businesses to attract further investment.

The government is committed to this plan. We are committed to fighting all the way to get it through the parliament, to get it in action, to get the money moving, to get the investment moving and to do what other governments around the world are doing to protect their citizens, to protect their working people, to support the jobs in their economies and to support the businesses, large and small, that create wealth and jobs—and we are going to stick to that and we are going to fight all the way.

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