Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to be joining the debate on the treasury laws tax arrangements and issues that concern the economy and households' savings at large. In the last 24-hours, we've seen an extraordinary passage of events in this parliament where the government was willing to collude with Pauline Hanson's One Nation party to do a deal—an extraordinary deal, an immoral deal—to push through changes to superannuation administration and regulation in this country which have been trouble plagued from the start. They are changes that were so problematic that they threatened to see a revolt in the government's own backbench.

Before parliament broke up last week we saw the result of that. The government—after spending weeks and weeks telling its backbench and the crossbench that its bill was perfect, was ready to be voted on and should be passed through the House—had to introduce amendments into this place to remove the extraordinary provision which would have given the Treasurer the power to cancel private sector investments. The Treasurer at that point in time had promised key members of the National Party backbench that he had removed the provisions which were so offensive to them and to so many other members in this place. What he didn't tell them was that, while he had put a padlock on the front door, he had left the back door wide open to enable him to continue that very same power through a backdoor measure.

Labor has consistently pointed out this issue to the community, to backbenchers of both the government and the opposition and to crossbenchers. Still the government persisted, by saying, 'We've got this all right. You should trust us. You should believe in what we say. You should believe the materials that we've put before the House.' But it was revealed in the Senate this morning that nothing could have been further from the truth. The government backbenchers can't trust or believe what they're own government tells them and brings before the House, because another raft of amendments had to be moved to that bill. And it is still not fixed.

But what was most extraordinary was the proposition that was being put forward by Pauline Hanson's One Nation that we know the government had agreed to, which would have had the effect of providing a whopping big tax cut, effectively a pay boost and a superannuation boost, to certain government MPs and senators of a particular age, and particularly remuneration arrangements which would have benefited Senator Hanson herself. They were extraordinary. In the Treasury bills and the budget initiatives that are being debated before this House, these matters were being contemplated.

It's incredibly important that the House take note of these issues because, while we are debating laws to implement budget decisions in this House, there are, around budget measures, a range of deals that are being put in place which are very, very wrong—very, very wrong indeed. I want to draw the attention of members of this House to these matters as we debate bills which implement budget measures in this place.

The shenanigans that have gone on in the Senate around the superannuation bills are nothing less than extraordinary. Fancy this—that, at a time when we've got flatlining wages and when economic growth is not delivering the productivity enhancements that we need to bring us forward as a nation, to deliver real wage increases and living standard increases for ordinary Australians, the government thought its No.1 priority was to do a deal with Senator Hanson which would have boosted the pay packets of politicians and high-wage earners but leave unattended all the problems in superannuation administration.

Let me give you an example. In the government's budget measures, they said that they intended to do something to ensure that Australians were not forced to be members of underperforming funds. And we know, because the Productivity Commission has told us, that there are in excess of three million Australians who at the moment have their money in underperforming superannuation funds charging higher fees and delivering low outcomes, and it could be costing those Australians as much as $230,000 in lost retirement savings. So we have this problem identified by the government—the underperformance of funds, and Australians overpaying fees—but dealing with that issue was not their No. 1 priority; it was attempting to do a very grubby deal with Pauline Hanson's One Nation to get an imperfect bill through the parliament. The House should take note of these issues as we are debating these Treasury laws amendment bills which introduce budget measures.

Now, schedule 6 of this bill, which extends the low- and middle-income tax offset, enjoys our full support. But we do note in passing that this provision, which provides a tax offset of up to $1,080, is a temporary measure, yet the government in its budget is persisting with its permanent tax cut for some of Australia's highest-income earners—another example of where this government has its priorities wrong. Whether it's superannuation or whether it's the provision of tax cuts to high-income earners, they have their priorities wrong and they're not focused on the big issues.

When the superannuation legislation was first introduced and debated in this House, we drew to the government's attention a range of significant problems if they were intent on implementing this budget measure. We told them that a bill which proposed to reduce the fees that people were being charged on their superannuation accounts was actually going to have the impact of increasing the fees, because administration fees were completely excluded from the measures within that bill. We pointed it out to the government. They denied it was a problem. Only because of Labor's strenuous campaign against this issue did the government correct that obvious flaw in their legislation. We pointed out to the government that the measures in the bill that they introduced in the House were going to have the effect of penalising superannuation funds that used Australian workers' superannuation funds to invest in Australian infrastructure and Australian unlisted assets. Fancy that—a provision which actually penalises superannuation funds for using workers' money to go to work for the benefit of the nation and the benefit of those workers. But that's exactly what this government's bill did.

They included within the bill—which still existed until 25 minutes ago—a provision which we have called 'the investment kill switch'. This was a provision which made the Treasurer the superannuation trustee-in-chief. It gave him an extraordinary power that has never existed in this Commonwealth before, a power to cancel any private sector investment of a superannuation fund that he did not like. They persisted with it, after telling their own backbench that they'd fixed it, until we were able to shame it out of them in the Senate, not 25 minutes ago.

These are important measures, because we are debating a bill which deals with the implementation of budget measures, and we have reason to be concerned about the government's intent and competence when it comes to implementing budget measures. I've addressed schedule 6 of the bill, which deals with the low- and middle-income tax offset, a provision which we support. In fact, we will be supporting each of the schedules within this bill, but we have grave concerns about the government's capacity to competently administer the provisions within this bill, because we have seen so many examples in this parliament in the last 24 hours of the government's incapacity to competently manage the implementation of budget measures.

I return to the superannuation measures, which are also included in budget measures. They are persisting with a piece of legislation which will staple members to dud funds. They say they want to fix the problem. We've provided a mechanism for them to fix the problem, but they have refused to implement this measure. So we have many reasons to be suspicious about the government's capacity to competently and honestly implement the measures that are before the parliament today in this session, because of the actions and the inactions of the government in so many other areas of budget bill implementation.

Whilst we won't be opposing this bill, we ask all members of the House, particularly members of the government backbench and members of the crossbench, when other budget bills come before the House, and the Treasurer or his representative stands at that dispatch box and says, 'Trust us; these bills do what we say they are going to do,' to be very suspicious indeed. If they can tell untruths to their own backbench and to the crossbench about the content and the administration of superannuation bills, then there is no limit to the capacity of this government to tell untruths about other budget implementation bills. We'll be supporting this bill, but we'll have a lot to say about other bills which implement budget initiatives, because we simply do not trust this government's ability to do what it says it's going to do and for its legislation to implement the announcements that the government says that it intends to do. With those comments, I commend the bill to the House.

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