Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) | Hansard source

For some, it made the difference from being evicted from the property they rent or being evicted because they couldn't pay their mortgage. Sadly, one of the first things this Labor government did when assuming office after the election was not continue the real cost-of-living initiative for those on low and middle incomes. I was contacted by people in this cohort, in dismay, asking why it had not been continued. My response was simply, 'Good question.' I encourage the government to reinstate this tax offset to give real, meaningful help at this most difficult time.

How do we know that Australians are actually going to be worse off under this new legislation? It's simple: the numbers don't lie. Treasury have estimated that the extra tax the government will receive as a result of their proposed changes is $28 billion over the next decade. How can Australians keep more of what they earn when the government collects more tax? It just doesn't make any mathematical sense. Let's look at a real example. A worker on $60,000 in 2017 paid $10,947 in tax. After the coalition's tax cuts and the low- and middle-income tax offsets in 2022, they paid $8,367 in tax. They were $2,580 per annum better off. Under this new Labor legislation, they will be paying $8,688 in tax, which means they are $321 worse off. As I say, the numbers don't lie; they actually expose the spin.

Labor are saying, 'Why would the coalition support these tax cuts if people are worse off?' I will be supporting them because, since they have not continued the low- and middle-income tax offset, this worker on $60,000 is now paying $9,867 in tax, and $8,688 is better than that. It's still not as good as when they were under the coalition government, when they only paid $8,367. That's why we are speaking out on behalf of these workers who will be earning less take-home pay under this government. The coalition will always go in to bat for all workers, regardless of what they earn.

We're only talking about gross and net wages here, or before-tax and after-tax wages. The real wages measure is the only true measure. This tells us what people actually get for their money. Under these proposed changes and the discontinuation of the low- and middle-income offset, as we have already established, people will be worse off in take-home pay terms. This would be fine if the cost of living were going down, but we see the exact opposite. We see that inflation is at 5.4 per cent, electricity is up by 20 per cent, food is up by nine per cent, insurance is up a whopping 22 per cent, and interest rates have risen an incredible 12 times under this government, meaning someone with a mortgage of $500,000 is paying just under $350 more per week in repayments than when the coalition was in government. This means that over the past 18 months real net disposable income, or what you have left after you've paid tax and your bills, has dropped by a massive 8.6 per cent. For an average income earner that's just under $8,000 that they are worse off. This is confirmed by the correspondence I receive in my office each day and when I am out and about talking to people. Cafe owners are telling me business is slowing and people who would buy three coffees a week are now buying two. Those who had coffee and cake now have just coffee. Hairdressers tell me many who used to have their hair done every six weeks are now having it done every eight weeks. These are real signs of the struggle people are enduring.

To make matters even worse, we see that Labor are investigating ways to implement other policies that will inflict even more pain on Australians, especially those on lower incomes. These are policies like the vehicle efficiency standards, which is to try to force people into purchasing an EV. This will add greater costs for those who choose or simply have to purchase a petrol or diesel vehicle because they can't afford the higher initial outlay incurred when purchasing an electric car. In New Zealand, when this policy was implemented, it drove up the cost of a car by around $7,000 New Zealand dollars. For many in my community of Longman, this is simply unaffordable. That's not to mention the impact on the motor vehicle industry and car dealers, who are still feeling the hangover from the COVID pandemic, where supply was a massive issue.

There has been research and polling done on policies like capital gains tax on the family home and changes to negative gearing, franking credits and family trusts all to raise money to fund policies like the $450 million failed Voice referendum, the $100 million for the new transmission lines needed for their energy policy and all the other crazy items on their agenda. Basically it's anything but the thing which matters most to most Australians—cost-of-living relief. Why wouldn't the government be delivering real cost-of-living relief? Political pointscoring, of course. They are simply obsessed with trying to deliver a budget surplus for no other reason than to try to hoodwink the Australian people into thinking that they are better managers of the economy. They will do this at the expense of the very people they say they are trying to help—low- and middle-income workers.

The coalition always aimed for a surplus but never at the expense of the Australian people. The time of the COVID pandemic is a prime example. We were on track to deliver a surplus. It was put on hold, and rightly so, to ensure costly but necessary measures could be put in place to ensure we minimised the economic pain during the pandemic for the people we were elected to serve. A touch of irony is that these COVID measures will in part help deliver the surplus Labor are claiming from increased tax receipts, along with the windfall from the mining and resources sector, including coal, which, again ironically, Labor so often berates and vilifies.

So I say to this government: forget the spin, smoke and mirrors, put the political pointscoring aside, reinstate the low and middle income tax offset in full, get rid of the fuel excise and deliver to the Australian people real cost-of-living relief, because they deserve it.

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