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

I thank the member for Ballarat for her question. The government is always open to considering new policy ideas, whether they be from the opposition or from any other sources. In fact, in my own portfolio I am eagerly awaiting savings suggestions from the opposition. It has been almost seven years since a Liberal shadow finance minister or finance minister advanced a substantial savings initiative. In fact, the 2003 budget was the last time, so I am eagerly awaiting some new ideas on that front.

We do not pick up just any old idea or any old garbled bit of gobbledegook that gets thrown at us. We apply a quality control test. Unfortunately, the proposal which the opposition most recently put forward, with respect to paid maternity leave, fails to meet that test. It is interesting today that, after a sudden burst of enthusiasm a couple of days ago, we have had not one single question promoting the new paid parental leave by the Leader of the Opposition. Some of the points I will now advance may help explain why they have dropped it like a stone. To begin with, the proposal put forward by the Leader of the Opposition completely repudiates past positions taken by not only him but also the shadow minister in charge of the program. In government the Leader of the Opposition said, ‘I’m dead against paid maternity leave.’ In January this year, the shadow minister, the member for Murray, said that they would be developing a proposal that would not put any tax burden on the business sector. Only about six weeks ago, notoriously, the Leader of the Opposition stated that the opposition committed itself to a promise of no new taxes and no increases in taxes. When confronted with the breaking of that promise yesterday, he said, ‘Sometimes you have to depart from principle.’

The flaws in the proposal put forward by the Leader of the Opposition are quite manifest. He did not consult the business community. He did not consult his economics team—the shadow Treasurer and the shadow finance minister—he did not consult his own shadow cabinet and, indeed, one of his own Liberal MPs, when confronted with the proposition by the Australian, described it as ‘a typical 1930s socialist impost on big business’ and was then surprised to discover that it was his own leader’s proposal. The detail of the proposal also does not withstand scrutiny. There has been complete confusion about the threshold. We know the threshold involves the figure of $5 million, the tax threshold above which the tax slug hits business. We know the figure is $5 million; we do not quite know what it is $5 million of. Is it turnover? Is it taxable income? Is it profit? We do not quite know, because the Leader of the Opposition has had several different positions.

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