Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is okay if people are attacked on our side of the House for defending workers' rights and standing up for decent wages, but, if anyone mentions the Prime Minister is a multimillionaire advocating policies that will benefit people like him, they scream 'class warfare'. They had no trouble rustling up $80 million of taxpayers' money to fund a royal commission into the trade union movement, but they refused to hold a royal commission into banking and financial sector practices or to deal with the 800 individuals the Panama Papers have disclosed as tax avoiders. There is a fundamental intent on that side of the House to break unions—and when you break unions inequality inevitably follows.

This is the story of what has occurred in the United States over the last 30 years, as the wage share has gone down, the profit share has gone up and their economy has struggled. They have a hollowed-out middle class, an even bigger army of working poor and an obscenely low minimum wage. That great country has been crippled by trickle-down economics, it has smashed its middle class and now it is busily smashing its society and the cohesion that is so essential. If people in a country cannot have an expectation that growth will deliver for them and their living standards in the future and they have no faith that their kids will have an opportunity and living standards in the future, the optimism so essential to the working of a healthy capitalist economy disappears—and, when that disappears, social cohesion goes with it.

The fundamental attempt embodied in the government's economic agenda really comes back to three bills: the two industrial relations bills on the one hand and the tax bill to give a $50 billion unfunded tax cut, mainly to multinational companies, on the other. It screams out as being an extreme trickle-down agenda, directly the opposite of what responsible organisations like the IMF are now recommending to developed economies around the world. To cover up for its wealth concentration agenda and to pretend it is somehow a wealth creation agenda, the government goes out there and ramps up its attacks on unions, Medicare, the NDIS, public schools and the public sector generally. There is story after story in the papers—you can set your watch by them. On a Sunday, there will be another story about how the tax system is carried by a few, how most of the people getting benefits are bludgers and should be knocked off, how the NDIS is simply unaffordable and how the welfare system is an unsustainable burden. Despite the fact that we have one of the most targeted, efficient welfare systems in the world, this diet of propaganda comes out to camouflage the government's real intent.

That is why I believe there is a rapidly growing divide between the government and the people in this country. I also believe that this divide has the potential to severely disrupt our political system, across the whole political spectrum. There is a wealth divide that is getting more obscene. The power divide is growing day by day as, in particular, the government sets out to silence the voice of working people. The drive from the government and its sponsors is simply to do one thing: increase the profit share in the economy and decrease the wage share in the economy. As I have said before, this is self-defeating economic policy that the IMF tells us will lead inevitably to weaker growth, not stronger growth. I have a fervent hope that there are some responsible voices somewhere out there in the business community—obviously not in the Business Council of Australia—who will speak out about how lopsided and self-defeating the government's agenda is. I know there are many that oppose it, but we do not hear their voices. What it is leading to is not only wealth and income inequality but increased political polarisation—and it all flows from the survival-of-the-fittest mentality at the top of this government, whoever leads it.

I believe that all Australians create wealth, from the cleaners here in Parliament House through to the executives who run the largest companies in the land. Everybody is a wealth creator and all Australians deserve a voice in our economic debate and a stake in our economic prosperity. On this side of the House, we will fight for that voice. (Time expired)

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