Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to talk about the hypocrisy, writ large, that we are seeing in our federal parliament this week. The government doesn't want to take action against the banks even though the royal commission has clearly shown us the unethical behaviours that have been happening across the last six years. The government wants to tell us that Labor's franking credit policy is somehow something for the community to be frightened of. Let's look at the facts. The franking credit policy proposed by Labor is going to add fairness to this country. Franking credit refunds will soon cost $8 billion every year. That's more than the federal government spends on public schools. It's a loophole that gives taxpayer funded handouts to people who haven't paid income tax. These cash handouts to people who have not paid tax are costing $100 million a week.

When I first came here in 2013, the first budget was the 2014 budget. Remember, we had a budget emergency! Australians needed to be lifters, not leaners. We all remember the rhetoric. There were proposals from this government for $100,000 degrees for university students. This government wanted a six-month waiting period for Newstart. The senior supplement was abolished. The mature age worker tax offset was abolished. The seniors health card was harder to qualify for. The dependent spouse tax offset was discontinued. They wanted to raise the age pension to 70. They wanted to introduce a $7 GP visit co-payment, because there was a budget emergency, but they hadn't noticed $8 billion a year that could have been recouped. They wanted to hurt the vulnerable all over this country, but didn't see that saving, which they could have listed in that budget and in subsequent budgets.

Labor believes reforming franking credit refunds will make our tax system fairer and raise revenue to be better spent on funding hospitals and schools. It's a choice. The government hasn't even committed beyond 2019 to 15 hours access for kindergarten and, hypocritically, wants to scare older Australians—and pensioners, for whom this has absolutely no impact. Labor wants to make this country a fairer place to live; those opposite don't care.