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

It is a pleasure to speak on the appropriation bills but it is also a fact that they are very important. They are very important in setting out a government's agenda about its priorities and where it wants to spend its money. Debate on these bills also gives everyone in this place an opportunity to highlight what a remarkably short-sighted government we have with the current Liberal government and what a remarkably antibusiness government the Abbott government is. While it mouths and pretends to be the best friend of business, what it does in fact is something quite different. It is very easy to say something, but it is much more difficult to actually deliver it.

Today, I particularly want to focus on superannuation. At a time when there is a big debate in the community about superannuation, I think everyone should take a very cautious and long-term view. My own view on superannuation is that the debate and the policy and decision making ought to be taken out of the political cycle and ought to be taken out of the budget cycle, for it to be truly sustainable and deliver on its objective, which is to ensure that ordinary Australians can be more independent in retirement—and hopefully completely independent from the age pension—and also to make a difference to the budget. Currently the difference to the budget, through Labor introducing the superannuation guarantee, is a saving of around $7 billion every single year. I do not want to make too big a deal of this, but $7 billion is bit of money and it is pretty important.

You need to remember the context of this. Everyone now agrees that superannuation in Australia is such an important factor when it comes to the national health of our economy. Yet the Liberals—particularly the Prime Minister and other people—fought tooth and nail to prevent it ever coming in and have had a lifelong ambition to kill it off. Let there be no mistake in this place: that is on the record; it has been repeated over and over, not just at the time of introduction but consistently. But yesterday we heard a different story from the Prime Minister. If you can believe him, he has finally changed his mind—but there were at least 39 good reasons in his own party as to why he might have changed his mind.

Let me tell you a story about how good superannuation is for our economy. Right now there is a little bit over $1.9 trillion in national savings, which puts us at about fourth in the world for funds under management. You can imagine a small-population country like Australia, with the fourth largest funds under management in the world and what that has done in terms of growing our financial services sector, our banking system and our financial system. The fact is that it is one of the best in the world.

APRA, the prudential regulator, released some figures recently. The average balance of accounts is quite low. We are still working on them; they need to be much higher. The average account balance in an industry fund is $28,172; in retail funds—banks and for-profits—it is about $29,300; in public sector funds it is around $77,000; and in corporate funds it is around $120,000. That is average, so it does not give you a great picture. The picture it does give you is that it is low and small. We need to keep building on that base. One of the ways you do that is by making sure that superannuation guarantee contributions continue to increase, from nine per cent to 9.5 per cent, from 9.5 per cent to 10 per cent over time, and eventually to 12 per cent, which everybody in the superannuation sector agrees is where we need to be—all except this forward-thinking government here! Their idea of forward-thinking is to look in the rear-vision mirror of the car and say: 'Where have we been in the past? That is where we ought to go in the future.' They are the ones who have stopped the increase in the superannuation guarantee. Who gets to miss out? Ordinary Australian workers. But who really misses out, particularly when we start talking about gender equality and average balances? It is women. About two-thirds of women who work in Australia are the greatest losers under an Abbott government. They are the ones who lose the most, because they also happen to be some of the lowest paid workers in this country.

Labor did a lot of good things, but we did two very big things. One is to ensure that superannuation would go from nine per cent to 12 per cent over time and the other is a tax fix of the inequitable treatment of superannuation contributions for people whose taxable income is less than $37,000 year. That is not a lot of money. But those people paid a higher effective tax rate on their superannuation contributions than everybody else. Most of those people are women. We acknowledged that inequity and we fixed it. One of the first things that this Liberal government did was take it away. That is their commitment to superannuation, their commitment to women, their commitment to gender equality, their commitment to the national economy. That is their commitment to our national savings pool that underpins this country. When we talk about fairness, equity, sustainability, gender imbalance—when we talk about the big things Australia has to do, not in the next five minutes but something that is going to sustain our economy in 20 years time—then it is Labor that stands up and does it. If those opposite just disagreed, I would give them that. I would say, 'It is just a disagreement.' But they do not just disagree; they unwind it, undo it and take it away. They are not taking away from the Labor Party; they are taking away from you—from ordinary people, from women, from people who earn less than $37,000 a year.

Just to put that into some context, the average superannuation balance across all accounts is about $82,000 for men but only $56,000 for women. Across all accounts, on retirement there is a $92,000 difference. If we are going to get serious about the debate and serious about sustainability in the long term, this is one of the areas we have to work on. So not only have those opposite paused the superannuation guarantee and gotten rid of the low-income superannuation contribution; they find more and more ways to disadvantage ordinary people and to have a massive impact. Look at what that represents in dollar terms for those people by 2025, which a little while ago seemed far away but today seems a little bit closer, particularly since the Intergenerational report is being released today—a very important document, which I will come to in a moment. It will mean $150 billion less for those people in their accounts, in their savings. That is the fact, and that is a tragedy. The numbers are not argued by anyone. It is not as if I am giving numbers that are contested—they are not. The policy cannot be contested, because it is the first thing that the Liberals did when they came into government. So, when it comes to superannuation, we see no fairness.

But the Liberals did do one thing. On the one hand, the Liberals talk about sustainability of budgets: 'We have got to look to the long-term. We cannot just spend, spend, spend.' Yes, fine words. What did they do when Labor put in place serious tax measures through two bills in 2013, one on multinational tax avoidance and the other on multinational profit shifting? They voted against it, got rid of it. There is no way they are going to have that—they do not want their mates to pay more tax. We thought they should pay at least fair tax. Australian companies have to pay it; why shouldn't foreign companies as well? We see that in a whole range of areas, and I do not have enough time to cover those. To me there is enough evidence—in fact, a litany of evidence. What we get from the Liberals is consistent; I will at least give them that. It is the nudge-nudge, wink-wink business: 'We are on your side. We are the best friend of Medicare.' That is at the same time as they have been trying to stab it in the belly, if you remember, for a lifetime. There is a solid commitment for you!

Just as recently as yesterday, apparently the best way to help people with their medical bills was a GP tax—more tax, another broken promise. That is how we will fix things. We will just tax the lowest end; we will tax people on low incomes. Labor has a view, and I think it is an important one. We think that it should not be your credit card that matters when it comes to health; it should be your Medicare card. It is the same as with education. We think it is your merit and your hard work that should get you into higher education, whether it is TAFE, college, a degree—wherever it is. It should be that that determines your entry, not how much money you have to buy a degree, like they do in other parts of the world. If there is a cost to this country, it is not a real cost in the sense that the Liberals want to make out; it is a contribution to our economy, because we know that educating people, higher education, whether it be finishing year 12, college, TAFE, university, contributes massively. The return to our economy and to every single taxpayer is enormous and should never be overlooked. When it comes to this Liberal government, they are not particularly interested in the facts. It is the nudge-nudge, wink-wink government, to small business in particular.

I feel pretty sad for small business, because they were promised a lot, but this is what they were delivered: a wholesale getting rid of every program that was designed specifically to help small business—entrepreneurial programs, skills and education programs—programs that directly assisted small business to grow and thrive. They just wiped the whole lot out. There is this view that it is all just red tape. The baby goes out with the bathwater—rather than picking through and getting rid of certain things. If they want to make things a bit leaner that is fine, but do not through everything out. Do not throw the whole lot out. Do not throw the good stuff out—the really good stuff that actually helps small business. They went further than that. This is what amazes me. If you added it all up across small business, they took away around about $7 billion of assistance—around $5 billion of direct assistance. They will say to you, 'How can we afford this?' I say to you, how can we not afford this? How can we not afford to help small business to employ people, to grow, to innovate—because at the same time that they are doing this the Liberals will come in here and ask you, 'Where are the jobs of tomorrow going to come from?' They are not going to come from the Liberal Party; we know that already.

Before the last election Tony Abbott, the Prime Minister, repeatedly made a solemn pledge—a promise, hand on heart—'I will deliver a million new jobs,' he said. Well, start counting because right now the metre is going backwards. Unemployment is now 6.4 per cent. That is a tragedy for this country. It represents the highest unemployment since 2002. So, I thought I would just check—like the Treasurer does and says. I asked myself a question. What was the answer to that question? I went and had a look. I asked Treasury a question: in 2002, who was the employment minister that got unemployment up so high? You guessed it—it was Tony Abbott, the now Prime Minister.

They talk about being the friends of small business—and I think I have worked something else out as well—whenever they say they are 'the best friend of', watch out. Best friend of Medicare? Knifed through the belly—that means a new tax for Medicare. Best friend of education? Students knifed through the belly—$100,000 fees. Best friend of small business? Through the belly—just knifing them. What do they do? They take away $5 billion of direct assistance. The instant asset tax write-off—a real tax break for small business, that genuinely actually helps them, is not a handout. It actually means that if they invest, we will co-invest. It means that if they do something, we will do something with them. If they employ someone, if they buy an asset or a piece of equipment, we will be there with them standing shoulder to shoulder.

Labor's record on small business stands as a record of positive assistance, of making sure that though the world's biggest global financial crisis our industries did not fall over, that our small business people did not find themselves on the scrap heap, and that they did not lose their homes, which they had mortgaged to start their businesses. You will hear the Liberals talk a lot about how small business people make sacrifices. And they do. But how do we support them in that sacrifice? We do not rip away their very lifeline for growth and for continuing to do good things. You should actually support them. What the Liberals do instead, though, is very simple. They take it away. They took away the tax loss carry-back for small business. They took away the special depreciation rules for small business. They took away the research and development tax incentives—where if you invest, we will invest with you. And when it comes to red tape, I am just offended. And I think a lot of small businesses are, because they would rightfully ask themselves right now, 'Has my bottom line changed since we had the bonfire of red tape from the Liberals?' This big let's all have a day off national red tape day—I am sure some of you might remember it. We are just going to burn thousands of pages, which, if you actually look carefully—and I will just show some people in the gallery—

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