Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I and my Labor colleagues are opposed to these amendments. We are opposed because they represent a dodgy deal with the Senate crossbench, from a dodgy government. What they will do is see Australian workers, pensioners, students and families worse off, yet at the same time they are offering a tax cut to some of the biggest corporations in this country. So the government are going to say to Australian workers: 'We'll make life harder for you. We'll make it harder for you to make ends meet.' The government are giving students the one-finger salute by saying, 'We're going to make you pay more for your university fees to get an education in this country.' For students in our schools, they are cutting $22 billion from the schools education budget over the course of the forward estimates. And they are making families far worse off by cutting family payments. Yet, at the same time, they want to offer a tax cut to Australian businesses.

They have brought these amendments here with a threshold of $10 million, but as we will see this evening in the government's budget their clear intention is to raise that threshold over time so that that tax cut applies to all Australian businesses. Let's look at some of those businesses that will benefit from this government's tax cut. The mining and resources companies are clearly doing it tough at the moment! Some of those that are subject to the petroleum resource rent tax, in particular, are clearly doing it tough! They are clearly paying too much tax at the moment!

Then, of course, there are the big four banks. Australia's big four banks have made an art form out of ripping off their Australian customers over the course of the last decade. Well, they clearly need a tax cut, don't they! The banks have been in the media again this week because some of them have announced their half-yearly profits. This week we have seen that Westpac has announced a half-yearly profit of $4 billion, which is close to a six per cent increase in their revenue over the course of the last six months. A profit of $4 billion is clearly not enough money! And this government thinks that they deserve a tax cut. Then of course there are our great friends the CBA, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, who went through the CommInsure scandal and who have gone through their wealth management scandal that resulted in nearly every single customer's file having to be reviewed not only by them but by ASIC as well. They made a half-yearly profit of $4.9 billion—again, close to a six per cent increase in their revenue. Clearly, the government believes that this is not enough; this simply is not enough. So it says: 'We'll give them a tax cut. We'll give those organisations that have been ripping off Australian workers, pensioners and families a tax cut. We'll make it life easier for them, but we'll make life much harder for Australian workers, families and pensioners.'

A policy like this would make some sense if it produced an economic benefit for the country. But those on the opposite side, like the Trump government in America, believe in this notion of trickle-down economics: if you cut taxes for corporations, everything will be all right and all of that benefit will flow down through investment and will trickle down to the average Australian worker. Well, it is complete rubbish. It does not work and it has never worked, but that is the twisted belief and the twisted priority of this government when it comes to budget priorities and budget planning. All that we will see is Australian workers worse off, real incomes cut, Australian pensioners worse off and Australian students worse off.

Treasury's own modelling on this tax cut produces little or no economic benefit over the course of the next decade and beyond. In fact, the benefit to the economy, in terms of GDP over the next 20 years, is less than one per cent and there will be no great effect on employment either. But at the same time they are going to cut $22 billion from the schools education budget over the course of the next decade. So here we have a $50 billion tax cut taking $50 billion out of the budget through a big tax cut for some of the biggest businesses in the country, which clearly do not need it, but at the same time they will take $22 billion out of the schools budget and make it harder for schools to make ends meet and for our kids to get a decent education. Those are the twisted priorities of this government, and that is why these amendments must be voted down.

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