Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Member for Kooyong is right. He is apparently going to bring some wisdom on foreign affairs to the opposition benches. Think about what happened at the last election. We were taken to task on our costings. We put them before the independent Parliamentary Budget Office for assessment. Those opposite waited. When did they put their costings in? They did not. Instead, they engaged their own auditor. What happened? Their auditor was found to have committed gross breaches of professional accounting standards. Those were their actions when it came to transparency. They went and engaged their own auditor, they set the standards against which he was to assess it be and then they took it to the people and said, 'This is ticked off.' They did not go through the Parliamentary Budget Office. They did not have it independently assessed. What happened? At the end of the day, there was an $11 billion black hole. That is the way that they look at market forces.

Stepping forward a little, they want to have a Rolls Royce version of paid maternity leave so that people can get up to $75,000 in half a year. What do those sitting over there in cockies corner think about that? Those in Sydney and Melbourne will benefit from this Rolls Royce version, but it will certainly not look after people in the Riverina or anywhere else out in their constituencies. I would have thought that we would have seen some consternation on that side of the House about that.

This is not just about how well you look after people. The buck stops somewhere. You have to pay for what you want to do. Their plan is a magic pudding. But the reality is that they are going to implement their plan by increasing taxes on business in order to pay for it. All those people opposite talk about the merits of the business based system and how we have to free up the economy. But they are the ones putting big new taxes on business with a view to funding their paid maternity leave commitment. And while I keep saying 'their' commitment, I know that it is not their commitment but rather the commitment of the Leader of the Opposition. It was not backed the other day by Andrew Robb, the shadow minister for finance. And it is probably not backed by the member for Kooyong and a few others who have a realistic view about economics.

When they talk about transparency, what they are actually talking about is playing politics with people. No greater example of that can be seen than their position with respect to the minerals resource rent tax. They are going to rewrite the fairytale books. We are talking about a top-of-the-town Robin Hood who is going to take money from the poor and give it to the rich. Their position will take money that was going to go to reducing taxes on small business, take money that was going to increase superannuation from nine per cent to 12 per cent and take money from vital infrastructure projects and return it to those at the top end of town in the middle of a mining boom. And these very same people have not asked for their money back. They are the people who negotiated the mining tax. Mr Abbott is going to say, 'We're not going to take it off you; we're going to give it back to you.' He is going to renege on reducing taxes on small businesses and renege on increasing superannuation for the workers in this country and he will not be in a position to deliver essential infrastructure. (Time expired)

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