Sharon Grierson (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer please outline for House the importance on delivering on reforms that are in the national interest?

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Newcastle for that very important question. Reforms, particularly long-term reforms, are very important for our future prosperity. We would not enter our 20th year of economic growth if we had not embarked upon very significant economic reform in the past. It is absolutely essential to prosperity into the future, which is why the government is getting on with reform.

It is getting on with the introduction of the mineral resource rent tax. Today, with the Minister for Resources and Energy, I announced our response to the Argus report. This is a very important way of getting access to resource rents which are owned by the Australian people. Through this tax we now have the capacity to reform our economy: to boost national savings; to make a very significant commitment to the superannuation savings of 3.5 million low-income earning Australians; to cut company taxation; in particular, to cut the taxation for small businesses; and—most particularly—to make an investment in infrastructure, particularly in our resource-rich states of Western Australia and Queensland.

We have to do this because the challenges of mining boom mark 2 mean that we need to make the investment in the infrastructure so we are not bedevilled by capacity constraints, and so we can handle the huge pipeline of investment that is going to create more jobs as we go forward. So this is a very important reform. It will raise $7.4 billion to fund those tax cuts, particularly for small business and the investment and infrastructure.

But we have now got to the point where those opposite have become so extreme and so bizarre that they oppose this revenue; they oppose receiving $7.4 billion to give a tax cut to small business, they oppose giving a tax cut to the company tax rate, they oppose increases in superannuation for low-income earners and they oppose investment in infrastructure.

This is of a piece with their opposition to abolish mortgage exit fees as high as $7,000 when people want to shift their mortgage. The extremism of those opposite knows no bounds. When it comes to either sticking up for the big end of town or sticking up for Australian families, they stick up for the big end of town. They are not siding with ordinary Australian families; whether it is a carbon price, whether it is a competitive banking system or whether it is for fair taxation in the resources sector, they are siding for even bigger super profits for mining companies against the Australian people. They are signing up for more profitable banks against a fair deal in the banking system, and they are supporting the big polluters against average Australians. It is about time they did the right thing by average Australians, instead of sticking up for the big end of town.