Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I move amendments (1) and (2) on sheet 1 together as circulated in my name:

(1)   Schedule 2, page 5 (before line 4), before item 1, insert:

1A Clause 1 of Part I of Schedule 7 (table dealing with tax rates for resident taxpayers for the 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21 or 2021-22 year of income)

Repeal the table (including the note), substitute:

[tax rates]

(2)   Schedule 2, page 6 (before line 1), before item 3, insert:

2A Clause 1 of Part III of Schedule 7 (table dealing with tax rates for working holiday makers for the 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21 or 2021-22 year of income)

Repeal the table, substitute:

If anyone in the broader Australian community is wondering how this third-term government found itself with the slowest growth in a decade and interest rates cut to one per cent, which is a third of what they were during the global financial crisis, with productivity going backwards, with weak household consumption, with weak household spending, and with stagnant wages, which are growing at an eighth of the pace of company profits, they need only listen to the contributions from those opposite over the past hour or so. They are so focused on what Labor is doing and what Labor is saying that they have left themselves absolutely no time to do their actual job, and it shows in the outcomes we are getting. The data being put out on an almost daily basis points to a floundering economy, which points to the fact that middle Australia is struggling. Every day we are reminded by the contributions—if you can call them that—of those opposite that they have absolutely no plan to turn things around.

The amendments before the House are about trying to get the place going again, about recognising that the economy has deteriorated. It has deteriorated even since the election. We've got some very poor economic data. The bank has had to cut rates twice in two meetings, down to extraordinary record lows. What the amendment recognises is that we need to do something about it. We have put these proposals to the government before now, and again now, because we do think that something needs to change. We can't have a situation where the Treasurer looks at the data that I've just run through and thinks that everything is hunky-dory. It's not. The economy is struggling on his and the government's watch, and something needs to be done about it. We owe it to the Australian people to put our heads together to try and work out what can be responsibly done to try and get the place moving again.

Labor have said all along that we support stage 1 of the tax cuts. They are, in my view, a no-brainer. We need to get those into the economy as soon as possible. It was promised that they would be in the economy yesterday. Unfortunately, the Treasurer and the Prime Minister broke that promise. They are not flowing through the economy. One of the reasons why we facilitated this debate tonight and why we'll do the right thing to facilitate debate later in the week in the Senate is that the economy is crying out for tax relief. Stage 1 is important in that regard. These amendments say that if the economy's slowing and the government doesn't have a plan to do anything about it, what can we on this side reasonably propose? What we've proposed in a responsible way, in good faith, is: why don't we take a portion of the tax cuts that would otherwise come into being in 2022, if the government passes its package, and bring them forward into the current financial year, which began this week? The net impact, the consequence, of that would be that every single Australian worker would get a tax cut this year. Under this government, some people will get a tax cut this year, some in 2022 and some in 2024. We are saying the economy is soft enough for us to consider a new way forward. That's why we are proposing what we are proposing in the amendments before the House right now.

I want to say one last point about the government's language around aspiration. The government wants to pretend that these tax cuts on the never-never are about aspiration. No government which actually understands aspiration would be cutting the wages of those who work on weekends. If there's something that really speaks to aspiration in this country, it is people who are prepared to work on Sundays to do a bit better for the people they love, to put food on the table. The idea of the government cutting penalty rates at the same time as it is talking about aspiration is in lots of ways, to be frank about it, sickening. Aspiration isn't a marketing term that you learn about from a focus group report; you have to be serious about it. You have to spend time with real people in real communities to understand it. What we are proposing here is to do something to get everybody a tax cut in this economy, to help boost it. People understand that their wages are stagnant, that the link between hard work and reward for that hard work has been severed by this government. We need to do something about it. We need to do something about the slowing economy. We've proposed a way forward here in these amendments. The government so far has been too pig-headed to pick them up and run with them. It's not too late for them to do the right thing and vote for them.

See this speech in context