Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Treasurer warned of the dangers of inflation. He said Labor was committed to improving productivity and reforming the taxation system. In May 2008 the Treasurer stood at the dispatch box and said:

Tonight I confirm the most comprehensive review of Australia's tax system since World War 2.

But the 2008 budget did not deliver this promised tax reform. Nor did the 2009 budget, nor did the 2010 budget and nor has this budget. Incidentally, this last budget was the first budget for eight years that has not provided tax cuts for everyday Australians. It is not an accident that this is also the first budget where they have not been able to simply adopt, even only in part, the tax reform schedule put in place by the former Treasurer, the Hon. Peter Costello AC.

Treasurer Swan announced the Henry tax review—another big first, according to the Treasurer, another historic review. Much was made of the fact that it would deliver significant reforms, making tax fairer and simpler. On 23 December 2009 the Secretary of the Treasury, Ken Henry, delivered the results of the Henry tax review. Some 1,500 submissions had been made, 30 speeches were delivered proclaiming just how big this tax review was and forums were held in every capital city across the country. While Wayne Swan kept the Henry tax review secret for over five months, he said that once it was announced he would act. But 17 months and three new taxes later, we are still waiting for the government to act. We are told it is going to be another five months until we see the tax summit. What the government has done so far in this short period, though, is to cherry-pick a few of the recommendations—that is, new taxes—and leave aside the actual reform. It is always easier to be a taxing government than a reforming one. It is here that we see the consistency of the Labor Party. They are consistent on this. They will always take the easy option. They will always tax more but always leave the hard stuff for someone else to do. They leave reform for a coalition government to do. So it is good to see that they are true to form, which brings me to the tax summit.

Before and after the election, the Prime Minister made a lot of promises to the Australian people and to the Independents. She said that there would be no carbon tax, but there was also another promise she made—a commitment to have a full and frank exchange on tax reform. In her letter of 7 September 2010 to the member for Lyne, the Prime Minister promised that a tax summit would be held by June 2011. Specifically, she committed to 'convene a public forum of experts on taxation and its economic and social effects to discuss the Henry review, with that meeting to be held before 30 June 2011' and to 'facilitate a debate on tax reform in the Australian parliament following the forum'. This is what the Australian people expected would happen and it is certainly what the Independent members of parliament expected to happen when they signed up to this current government. The member for Lyne said in a speech on 7 September 2010:

By June 2011, we've got a commitment to have the Henry Tax review thrown into the public domain with full recommendations from government and a fair-dinkum open debate—

about tax—

in this country. That is a good and big outcome from this process …

The Prime Minister and also the Treasurer come to the table with their credibility in tatters. While Australia may have hoped for a fair dinkum and open debate about tax, it has been very difficult for the Prime Minister to appear fair dinkum while demoting this summit to a forum, then to a seminar and then finally to what no doubt will be a meeting when it at last occurs in October this year. There has been a very deliberate delay: the summit was originally to take place in June and July, but the date has, as I said, slipped to October. The Treasurer said he was going to provide some details as to who will be invited to this forum in the coming months, and he said that he would release a discussion paper in the middle of the year to help foster debate, but we are still waiting to find out who is going to be invited to come along.

What can we expect from the summit when it does finally happen? Since 2007, Wayne Swan has announced 13 new taxes, and before the government released the Henry tax review there were 125 taxes. Since the government's response to the Henry tax review, we have seen a mining tax, a carbon tax and a flood tax which together have put the number of taxes up to 128. Is this how the government reviews tax reform? If it is, then—goodness gracious!—what can we expect from this tax summit? Will it give small business the opportunity to make genuine contributions to the reform of our taxation system or will small business be told about further new taxes?

Just as we heard no mention of the carbon tax in the Treasurer's budget speech, the tax summit—despite the government's claim that it will be a comprehensive review—will not even cover the carbon and mining taxes. It is understandable that Labor would like to pretend that the carbon tax does not exist—the government set a goal to collect no more than 23.5 per cent of GDP in tax revenue—but if a carbon tax of $26 per tonne were included in the current budget, and we know that the Greens would like the tax to be upwards of $100 a tonne, the government's target would, of course, be exceeded. Instead it was completely ignored.

In the budget we know that the figure for revenue and spending from the carbon tax is at least $11.5 billion per year, yet this has also been completely ignored. So not only does Labor refuse to countenance the effects of its carbon tax on families and businesses struggling already with the cost-of-living pressures that they have to live with day to day; it refuses to accept that the carbon tax is a violation of its very own measure of fiscal discipline. The Treasurer cannot have it both ways; he cannot claim that there is a lack of revenue when over the next two years the government is set to receive a record-breaking $75 billion in extra revenue. The Treasurer cannot claim that the carbon tax is an important economic reform and at the same time ignore it completely in the budget because it makes the government look bad.

There are only a couple of real reformers here. It is the coalition that are the real reformers on tax. That is why we went through the pain of introducing a GST—a reform that the Labor opposition opposed tooth and nail. We ended up replacing the wholesale sales tax and nine different state taxes, and we did it over time after we had explained to the Australian people why it was necessary to take these actions. Not only that; we were prepared to get a mandate for it. We took our reforms to an election. We made sure that the Australian people understood the need for a GST and the impact it would have on their lives day to day before we brought it in. Not so this arrogant Labor government.

Already, as I have said before, the Australian people are suffering cost-of-living pressures. Since 2007, energy costs have risen by upwards of 51 per cent, education costs have risen by upwards of 24 per cent and there have been seven interest rate rises in a row. This is having a huge impact on Australian families. When you add in the carbon tax and the RBA's forecast further interest-rate rises, life will be made increasingly difficult for Australians who are working, paying their mortgage and trying to raise a family. Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan—

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