Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The best way to put more money in people's pockets is to lift wages, which are flat lining, and to make education and health free, so that people don't pay more to go and see the doctor when they get sick or to go to university or TAFE. If we keep going down this road of a tax cuts arms race, we are going to run out of revenue that the government needs to fund the services that people expect. Without revenue to fund services, inequality grows. Inequality in Australia is at a 70-year high. To suggest that the answer to our current situation—where underemployment, especially amongst young people, is at crisis levels and the Reserve Bank is starting to ring the alarm bells—is to engage in this tax cuts arms race, where each side is saying, 'Ours are bigger than yours; ours will come sooner than yours.' It is setting us up for more inequality and economic failure.

The government is pushing this for ideological reasons. The government does not want to fund universal services. The government does not want to see free education or universal healthcare. We know that. Part of its agenda is to cut the amount of revenue that comes in to the government's public purse and could then go to fund universal public services. We saw an inkling of it on the eve of the election when the government said that part of the way they were going to fund their election promises was by cutting the Public Service. That came out at the last minute: 'We're going to take $1.5 billion out of the Public Service.' If that's what they need to do to fund their election promises, that is a drop in the ocean, because this package is going to cost $158 billion. That's $158 billion less in the kitty to spend on schools, to spend on hospitals, to spend on education. Faced with such a fundamental fork-in-the-road approach about how we are going to deal with tax, revenue and services, we should have enough time to debate this bill. We haven't, and I've dealt with that before. What we do need to do is not be scared by the ideological rhetoric coming from the government but, instead, start having a debate about the kind of society we want, and use this as an opportunity not to worry about a political point or two being scored but to have a debate about what kind of society we want.

If what we were doing was just talking about the low-income tax offset and working out ways of getting targeted support to low-income earners that didn't change all the tax brackets so it flowed on to high-income earners, stage 1 of the bill might be worth having a debate about. With respect to stage 2, both the government and the opposition, seem to be saying, 'All of this is about low- and middle-income earners.' It's not. It changes the tax brackets. The people who will get the full benefit of stage 2, and for the life of me I don't understand why the Labor Party is saying it's got to be fast-tracked, will be the top 10 per cent of income earners, because it changes the tax brackets. It's not about helping low- and middle-income earners; it's about changing the tax brackets so that everyone at the top are the ones who will get the full benefit. That's where a great big whack of this goes. Stage 3 ends the progressive tax system itself. I move an amendment to the motion moved by the shadow Treasurer:

That all words after "whilst" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"supporting greater assistance to low income working Australians, the House:

1. urges the Government to introduce legislation that provides greater assistance to low income earners; and

2. declines to give this bill a second reading until such assistance is legislated for low income earners".

There are better ways to support people on low incomes than by reducing equality and cutting taxes, because tax cuts hamper the government's ability to reduce inequality and to help people who are doing it tough.

I wish there had been a different result from the election as far as who's the government is concerned. That's clear. I understand that, from the Labor Party's point of view, they've now got to make decisions from opposition, whereas I'd hoped that there would have been a change of government, and we haven't got that. But, at this point, what we've got to do is work out whether we're going to have a parliament where, every time the government say they want to do something on tax, on national security or whatever, the response is, 'Well, we'll see you and raise you,' or we're going to turn this into a place where we have debates about different visions of what Australia should be like.

From the perspective of the Greens, we will oppose this government and its right-wing, deregulatory, neoliberal agenda. We would hope that sense prevails, especially as it comes to the Senate, and that, instead of helping this government create a more dog-eat-dog Australia, others in this parliament will choose to work with us to say: 'No, sometimes it's better not to vote for a tax cut, especially not a tax cut that changes the tax brackets to give the most support to people who are in the higher tax brackets and on the higher incomes. Instead, let's put that money into making education free; making healthcare universal; and lifting some people out of poverty who currently haven't got a job because of the high underemployment rates that this government has presided over.' That's the debate that we should be having. I hope there's a change of heart by the time this goes to the Senate. Until then, we will be fighting this tooth and nail, because this is the kind of approach that eats away at the government's ability to reduce inequality.

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