Zoe McKenzie (Flinders, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Yesterday the Treasurer refused to rule out changes to franking credits and negative gearing. Will the Treasurer rule out changes to taxes on superannuation?

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for her question. I'm pleased to inform the House that our position hasn't changed on the question that they asked me today and yesterday, on the matter of taxes. Our priority is to do something meaningful about multinational taxes. We've said that for some time now, and that's our agenda when it comes to tax.

I'm asked about tax policy. It's a good opportunity to inform that House that today the member for Hume gave a little speech about tax at the Centre for Independent Studies. I was asked about tax. What I notice or what I'm told from this steaming little pile of Thatcherite rubbish, plucked straight from the yellowing pages of a Young Liberal newsletter in the 80s was the member for Hume—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question was about tax. They want to give us a lecture on tax. I'm talking about tax to you. Just have a seat. You might learn something.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Manager of Opposition Business, on a point of order.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On relevance: I would ask that you follow the tradition of Speaker Jenkins, well-respected Labor Speaker Jenkins, and direct the minister to relate his material to the question at hand. If he's said all he's going to say on the question, he should sit down.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Treasurer was asked about tax policy regarding franking credits, negative gearing and superannuation. I draw him to the last part of the question and give the call to the Treasurer.

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We got a lecture on taxes today from the mob who were the second highest taxing government in the last 30 years, the highest taxing government since John Howard's government; from a party that just, in the last couple of weeks, voted against a tax cut on cars in this place. We didn't just get a lecture on taxes; we got a lecture on the cost of living from the mob that kept wages deliberately low for a decade and from a shadow Treasurer who tried to keep secret a 20 per cent increase in electricity prices. We got a lecture on debt from the mob who doubled the debt even before the pandemic and left us with rising interest costs on the trillion dollars of debt that they left behind. And we got a lecture on productivity from the same people who gave us the worst decade of productivity in the last 50 years.

I don't know what's more concerning—that the Shadow Treasurer might not be the sharpest tool in the Liberal Party's shed or that he might be the sharpest tool in the Liberal Party's shed. Only in a Liberal Party this bereft of ideas and talent would the member for Hume even get a look in, in a serious economic portfolio, so we won't be copping lectures from the leftovers of the last government, not on tax, not on spending, not on borrowing, not on the cost of living, not from the dregs of the government which presided over a wasted decade of missed opportunities and messed up priorities and which left us a mess that will take more than one budget to clean up.