Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The problem with the shadow Treasurer making a speech like that is that he lacks all credibility on these issues. He lacks absolutely any credibility on economic issues. He sets tests for the government that he never met when he was the senior adviser to our worst Treasurer ever, Wayne Swan. When we came to government, we inherited a slowing economy, we had rising unemployment and we had a worsening budget position. So, on every single measure that the shadow Treasurer referred to, things were in a worse position when he had control of the levers. Yet every achievement by this government is not enough for the failed shadow Treasurer, who was the failed chief of staff to Australia's worst Treasurer, in Wayne Swan.

The reality is that the Australian economy is in good shape, and the Treasurer outlined that in question time today, whether he was quoting ratings agencies or quoting the Reserve Bank. If you compare Australia to the nations we should compare ourselves to—big, established, stable democratic economies—we are growing faster than any country in the G7. Wages growth is higher than the wages growth that we inherited from the Labor Party. This is the irony of the debate. The Labor Party come in here every day bemoaning wages growth, yet it was lower when they were last in government—never heard a word about it from the Labor Party when they were in government, never. Minimum wages under the Labor Party, the great champions of the workers, decreased in three of the six years that they were in government. Under the coalition government, they have risen every year.

When you come to the dispatch box to make these statements, you've got to have credibility, and the absolute worst person for the opposition to put up in these sorts of debates is the failed shadow Treasurer. Perhaps the only worse person that you could put up in this MPI is the member for McMahon—the member for McMahon, who's still got extraordinary power within the Labor Party, because every single one of his policies is still on the books. Every single one of the Labor Party's policies, the failed policies that they took to the election, is still on the books. We saw it this week, and I outlined it in question time. There was an extraordinary report in the Fin Review this week that the shadow housing minister, in a speech, had said that Labor's negative gearing policies were not dead. So we've got the shadow housing minister, in some sort of alliance with the shadow Treasurer, clinging on, holding on for dear life, to all of the higher taxes that the Labor Party took to the election and on which the Australian people delivered their verdict.

There were the one million retirees who would have been hit by the Labor Party's proposed removal of franking credit refunds. The member for McMahon very helpfully before the election quite strongly recommended that those people vote against them—and, boy, did they take that advice! Boy, did those retirees take the member for McMahon's advice! So that's still on the books.

What about the $30-odd billion of extra superannuation taxes? I think we all remember the former opposition leader who magically forgot about those at a doorstop during the election campaign—$30 billion is just a bit of a rounding error for the Labor Party when you're talking about increasing taxes by $387 billion!

Ms Payne interjecting—

Ms Murphy interjecting—

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