Garth Hamilton (Groom, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's the hour of brotherly love, so I welcome to the parliament the member for Menzies and commend him for his doorknocking. Speaker, I express my unending joy at your re-election to the speakership—I think of all the good, fun times we have had together, one on either side of 94(a)! I stand with a perfectly unblemished record in this 48th parliament. Speaker, I wish to commend you on your commitment to civics education across the country and invite you to Darling Heights State School, the most diverse school we have on the Darling Downs, with 41 different cultures and around 36 different languages. The teachers there do a fantastic job with an incredible challenge in front of them. I know they would be absolutely beside themselves to see you.

I rise this evening to take a look ahead at what I think is the most important work that is in front of us in this parliament. I am now entering my third term, and one conversation that comes up over and over again is how our national tax policies affect us. I think it's important to point out that tax policy has the ability to shape the nation. We respond to what it incentivises. It shapes our way of life. We are what we tax. If we get the settings right, we foster aspiration and social mobility and reward generosity. If we get the settings wrong, we foster dependence, enable inequality and reward selfishness. Our tax settings are very, very important.

I am reminded of the tax settings in pre-civil-rights-era United States—some deplorable tax settings. There were poll taxes that kept black Americans out of the democratic system in the south and tax receipts being divided by race so that black schools got less money than white schools. There was proposition 13, the famous case in California that capped land tax rates for existing landowners but allowed them to increase for new—that is, Hispanic or black—landowners and kept people out. My point in raising these is that not everyone in the US at the time under those laws was racist, but everyone under those laws had to abide by them and it shaped the country of its time. It's the worst possible example of how tax systems shape a nation, create that inequality and make a nation worse. So that's why I think it is such an important conversation for us to be having.

When I think about the sort of tax settings I want for this country and what I hear from my constituents, I think if you are looking after each other then Australia should be looking after you. If you invest your time, your money, your energy and, if you are lucky, your love in someone else, Australia should be building its future around you. That idea of family is a powerful one. It's changed a lot over time. It means a lot of things. But, if two people are coming together and giving something of themselves to each other, they make a greater contribution to our society and we need to reflect that in our tax system.

I think we should also extend this into how we care for each other. There is a man in my electorate by the name of George. Both he and his mother are profoundly disabled and, over time, the mother's needs have grown greater than George's. He now looks after her. The carers allowance he receives is $159.30 a fortnight. I don't think that that reflects the care and the love that he provides that relationship. That's a family. That is two people looking after each other. I think we can do better than that. These are conversations I want us to have.

When I first came into this place I talked about the role of income splitting and treating a family unit as one for taxation purposes. When I raise this, one of the more vocal objections I get is that this is some far-right policy. It is actually a policy I have stolen from socialist France. It's been a policy there since 1945. They see no trouble with it. I think we need to stop looking at things from 'left' or 'right' and see what they'd do for our nation and what they'd do for families. So that is where my attentions will be turned this term. I think it is important that we address these issues and do everything we can in this place to make Australia a better place.

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