Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta. I congratulate you on your election to your position. It is a pleasure to speak on the Minerals Resource Rent Tax Repeal and Other Measures Bill 2013, because it gives me an opportunity to highlight some of the failings of this government already, and some of the very serious things that are contained within this bill.

If this bill were just about the minerals resource rent tax, you might be able to side with government and say, 'Okay, if there is no revenue coming in, there is certainly no burden to anybody; certainly not to mining with no revenue'—as we have just heard from a number of members. You might think that it was something they could argue. I may not agree with it—but I might be able to understand. But they do not seem to understand the purpose of a minerals resource rent tax as a market based, profit based system and mechanism, which in the past perhaps the Liberal Party would have supported—or even thought of themselves—as the best and most efficient way to tax.

You do not just tax on the tonnage that comes out of the ground; that is very inefficient. It does not account for whether you make a profit or make a loss; it just means you are continually paying this royalty based on the amount you extract from the ground. The best way, just like the petroleum resource rent tax, is to actually say to those involved: 'We will not tax you. We will only tax you when you make a profit, particularly a superprofit. That is when you ought to be taxed.'

Let's just remember—and we should absolutely acknowledge this—those resources are owned by every single Australian. And what should come back to every single Australian is some sort of benefit to them from the once-off use. Once it is out of the ground and used, that is it; it is gone. That resource should be for the benefit of all Australians. So there is no great magic around a minerals resource rent tax as compared to a petroleum resource rent tax which works exactly as intended. In the good years when profits are made, tax is paid. When superprofits are made, a little bit more tax should be paid. These the big mining companies or big petroleum organisations, and they should be able to pay those taxes. So on one hand we have the government saying we need to get rid of this tax that no-one collects; it hasn't raised any revenue and it is such a burden. Who is it a burden to if it is not raising any revenue?

If it was just those arguments, I might maybe just allow the government to have some sort of leeway on this issue. But it is not that that I am concerned about. It is what they have put into this repeal bill which really concerns me. You cannot possibly come into this place and talk about cost-of-living issues and pressures on families and then at the same time in this bill repeal the schoolkids bonus.

I can remember and recall a long time ago, people in my electorate—and I am sure it was the same in other people's electorates—families, mums and dads coming up to you and saying: 'Is there anything you can do for our family to actually reduce our cost-of-living burden, give us a little bit of hand through the tax system?' It is only on what they spend, just to help with the schoolkids, with the books with uniforms, with excursions, with a whole range of costs associated with educating your children.

We know from research done today, regardless of what school kids go to, there is an enormous cost attached for families in terms of educating their kids. Labor agree with them. We figured there was a really good way that we could help with the cost of living and with families, and that is to give them a schoolkids bonus.

It is modest, but it is fair. We were giving $410 a year for every primary school student and $820 a year for every high school student. That helped 1.3 million Australian families get a better start at the start of the school year, making sure they got that bonus so they could make sure their kids did get all the school uniforms, that they had all the books; maybe they had to buy an iPad or a laptop—all the things that modern education requires of young people today.

That is what upsets me the most about this bill. If they had just done the MRRT and said let's have a debate—let's have an argument, let's have a go at each other over a minerals resource rent tax. The Liberal side of the chamber wants to give a tax break to big mining companies? Let them pursue that course and argue and debate that merits of that. We say we think the big mining companies, if they extract an Australian resource, should share a little bit more of that with all Australians. I am happy to debate that with anybody anywhere. I think on that course of action we are right.

It has also never been the case that a minerals resource rent tax is meant to deliver everything to all people on day 1. It is not there for the next six months to raise money; it is there for the next generation. It is there for our future and for the future of this country. You get the settings and frameworks right, and it delivers. Maybe it is not raising the revenue that it was hoped it would raise today because we have seen a down turn in the mining industry, not in demand but in revenue, and so nobody is paying it. It is pretty hard to complain about a tax you do not pay but it seems to be the case that that is exactly what the government is doing. The government never misses the opportunity to back big business over small business, the big guys against the little guys. It is always the case that they are on the side of the big mining company or the big petroleum company. When it comes to the ordinary Australian family, 'let them fend for themselves' seems to be the mantra that we get.

If it was just the schoolkids bonus, maybe they could have an argument. I do not think that taking away the schoolkids bonus for 1.3 million families is a good thing to do. We should remind the government and we should remind those 1.3 million Australian families every single week that this government slugged them with an extra tax of $410 per primary child and $820 for every high school student.

It goes further. We know those opposite never supported superannuation for ordinary working people. It is okay for public servants, it is okay for high-end managers and it is okay for mining executives to have super. I think it is okay too, by the way. I do not dispute that anyone should have superannuation. But it took a Labor government, Hawke and Keating, to come up with the outrageous plan that ordinary people should get superannuation as well. How dare we think that an ordinary worker should have a little bit saved up for retirement as well? It was audacious.

We were fought tooth and nail, day and night, kicked almost to death on the issue of superannuation from people like that now Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who said absolutely categorically said on the record that he was supposed to it and thought it was the biggest con job this country had ever experienced. You would change your tune today when you see that national savings through superannuation are now at about $1.6 trillion. Apart from the good work that the Labor government did during the global financial crisis, we had this massive national savings pool of $4.6 trillion which helped underpin our economy.

No one would argue today that superannuation and the super guarantee was a great thing to do, even though a whole range of people today who go along with it opposed its introduction. Today they get their opportunity to go and damage it. They did not like it a little over 20 ago and they do not like it today, although they give it a bit of lip service every once in a while. What can we do to hurt the superannuation guarantee for ordinary working Australians? They go 'we will delay the increase'. So a part of this bill delays the increase that Labor put in place from nine per cent to 12 per cent, which everyone in the industry agrees is where it needs to go over time. A little bit at a time, it needs to go from nine per cent, which is inadequate, to 12 per cent and perhaps in the future even higher. We will talk about that at some later stage.

The first act of this government is to say 'workers need to wait'. They are going to have to wait two more years. Ordinary people, mums and dads, whether they are in a small business or whether they are working for somebody else, are going to have to wait two more years to get the super guarantee increase that Labor put in place. It is not just our view on this. The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia also agrees. They have attached some numbers to this and said how much this delay will cost the people.

A whole range of other associations and bodies have come out slamming the new government and saying: this is not in the national interest; this is not good for the economy; this is not a saving to government but a cost to government. This is actually really bad for working people. It is also bad for the economy and bad for government but ideology seems to have taken one little extra step forward. When it comes to good economics and good policy, ideology seems to win out, and that I cannot support or agree with.

The government does not rest there. They put more of this stuff in here. They want to make it hard for us to be able to vote for or against things by lumping them all in together. The low-income super contribution that Labor put in place fixed an anomaly where if you earned $37,000 a year or less you effectively paid more tax on your superannuation contribution than you did on your salary or your income. Let me tell you, $37,000 is not a lot of money. Ask anybody who is on an income of $37,000 a year or less how tough it must be for them.

It was agreed across the sector that this was a good move, a good thing. It was worth about $500, not a lot of money but it makes a big difference if you are on a low income. Labor put into place a measure that removed that tax called the low-income support contribution. Millions of ordinary working people, particularly two million women—because they tend to be the ones to return to the workforce late after raising a family or are in and out of the workforce or work part-time—are affected by this.

When we talk about particular issues, about who we want to help, about decisions to put money on the table, Labor has made it clear: we want to help ordinary people get just a little bit ahead. Five hundred bucks a year extra in their super is going to make an enormous difference to them when they retire, worth a substantial amount in today's dollars. Why would you rip it away from them? Why would you take it away from those two million low-income earners, particularly women? If it was just that, you might say 'okay, we get it'. But at the same time as they do that—you are not going to believe this—they are going to reduce the tax paid by people who have got more $2 million in their super accounts. The Liberal government says it is happy to take away from the lowest-income earners but if you have more than $2 million in your super balance then it will give you a tax break because it reckons you are probably doing it tough and you need it. I do not think that I can support that either. I think it is quite shameful to do the two together. Maybe the government could have been smart and separated the measures out and done them in different places so we might not notice but it has done them together, which I think is just wrong and tragic.

These changes mean there will be less benefit to our economy by $53 billion. A number of people have done some research work on this and estimate that the removal of the low-income support contribution will reduce national savings by $53 billion by 2021. It is not that far away but $53 billion is a substantial piece.

I want to end my remarks by drawing to the House's attention the fact that this government always claims Liberal governments to be the best friends of small business, the party of small business and that they want to help small business. Let me tell you what we did in government. We put in place a whole range of packages directly to assist small business worth in the many billions of dollars. The first act of this government to thank small business for their election is to take it away from them. What they are going to repeal is the increase in the instant asset write-off from where we had it at $6½ thousand dollars, uncapped, unlimited, for small business. They are going to peg it back to a thousand bucks, because they do not believe small business needs a break or that small business should get a bit of shot at trying to make life easier for them when they buy assets.

Labor, on the other hand, actually supports small business and our policy coming to the election was we would increase it from $1,000 to $6½ thousand, which we did which was already being used and it benefited small business. We said we would take it to $10,000, because we realised that, when the economy is doing it a little bit tough, you need to support small business and that is what we should do. This mob on the other side are taking it all away from them, so it is pared back to just $1,000.

We also put into place, recognising that small businesses from time to time might actually make a loss or could rearrange their tax affairs in a particular year, Labor's tax loss carry-back worth up to a million dollars. So if a small business wanted to rearrange its tax affairs, buy particular assets and make a loss in a particular year, we said, 'You could carry that back to tax you had already paid in the past up to a million dollars and we will refund the money back to you.' Because we wanted to be generous to small business and help them out, so the tax loss carry-back: a million dollars. The Liberal Party says to small business, 'Thanks for the votes during the election, but we are going to take that off you as well. Sorry, we're going to take that off you.' I am sure you going to be happy with that. These increases to tax, because that is what it is for small business, are really going to hurt them.

This Liberal government is also going to change the way that we help to accelerate depreciation for motor vehicles: $5,000 instant depreciation. We tried to make it as easy as we could to give a hand-up to small business. We understand they are hardworking people and often they are just ordinary hardworking people who are really making a go of it, whether they employ their family, a friend or anybody else; whether they are a one-person business or employ more people. Labor wants to support you. We did that through a whole heap of direct cash assistance.

What this Liberal government is doing is taking that away. So throughout these bills, what we see is, first, the misconception that there is a tax that is not raising any revenue which is a burden and kills big miners so therefore we should get rid of it. I am happy to have that debate and argue that quite separately, but don't include in here that you are going to delay the nine to 12 per cent increase in superannuation. Don't make it harder for hardworking Australians on $37,000 a year and don't hurt small business. Give them back the direct cash assistance that we provided to them while we were in government.

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