Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Hansard source

No, I'll move on. I move:

That this House:

(1) acknowledges that:

(a) an Australian couple both in paid employment without kids can have a combined income of $250,000 and pay approximately $67,634 in combined tax;

(b) an Australian couple with only one person in paid employment while the other is looking after the kids can also have an income of $250,000 yet have to pay $88,167 in tax, over $20,000 more than other couples; and

(c) income splitting:

(i) would allow the couple in the second scenario to pay the same amount of tax as the couple in the first scenario;

(ii) would also acknowledge and give monetary value to the incredible work done by stay-at-home parents; and

(iii) might also allow couples to start and/or grow their families so our nation stops relying on migration for growth; and

(2) calls on the Government to take immediate and decisive action to introduce income splitting to:

(a) more fairly share the taxation burden between couples with kids and couples without kids;

(b) acknowledge and value the contribution made by stay-at-home parents; and

(c) address Australia's declining birth rate.

We have the great honour of belonging to a vanishing race. Dr Bob Birrell said that our population will be seven million towards the end of this century. We will vanish as a race of people. Now, I personally love Australians, and I'd like to see a lot more Australians. I'm not going—and I don't have time—to go into the reasons we are not seeing more Australians. But we believe profoundly that if women are provided with $65,000 at the birth of a baby, then we will have a lot more babies in Australia. The current birthrate is 4.4 million a year, but that should reasonably, I think, be over one million a year. What we are advocating is $65,000 on the birth of a baby. People say, 'What, are we going to buy babies now?' It changes the attitude of people. Young people are desperately trying to buy a house. They can suddenly see, 'Jeez, that would be good.' It will change the attitude, and that really is much more important than the actual $65,000 in itself.

Deputy Speaker Aldred, you may say, 'That's a lot of money.' Look at income splitting at the moment—or DINKS versus SINKS, as they say. Double income, no kids—that's the DINKS—get $110,000 a year. They pay tax. They've got nearly $80,000 in disposable income. If you're a SINK, you're on a single income with a number of kids. Let's say you have three kids and a non-working wife who stays at home to look after the kids. You will be on $15,000 a year. The question is: do you want to be on a $75,000 disposable income or do you want to be on a $15,000 disposable income? Needless to say, Australians are not having a lot of babies. If we've got a value system imposed upon the people of Australia where you are brutally punished if you have children and you're on easy street if you don't have children—well, excuse me if our young people are not having any children.

You ask, 'Where are you going to get that money from?' It behoves me to say: you build the Bradfield Scheme. It's not exactly a fool. We built the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Sydney's water supply, the underground railway system—won the world prize for engineering. It's not exactly a fool. That brings in the Bradfield Scheme. It diverts the water to where it can be used—it rains all the time in the electorate I represent—from where it never stops raining out to the other part of my electorate where it never starts raining. That's the Bradfield Scheme.

We import 62 thousand million dollars worth of petrol every year. What sort of brainless country are we? We send our petrol overseas and we get eight thousand million dollars for it. Then we spend 62 thousand million buying that oil back as petrol. What sort of brainless country are we? We buy all our motor vehicles from overseas—23 per cent of the motor vehicles bought in Australia are bought under a government contract. If you want to get your car free under a government contract, then you will drive a motor vehicle made in Australia—and then we'll have secondary industry back in this country, as well as providing a huge income for Australia. Our gas we gave away for nothing. Qatar exports the same amount of gas—these figures are about 12 years old; it's much worse now. But they get 29 thousand million for their gas. We get 630 million for our gas. They get 29 thousand million for theirs! So, yes, it'd be nice if we got a bit of a return on gas.

For water development programs, we have a proposal called CopperString which'll open up the mineral wealth of North Queensland, and the Bridle Track tunnel, which will open up the mineral wealth of North Queensland. We'll give you back about $30 billion a year if you give us a little bit of wire going out west—and that little tiny tunnel one kilometre long. Brisbane's got 27 kilometres of tunnels, with a million people. We've got a million people in North Queensland and we've got no tunnels—

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