Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The thing I enjoy most about being an MP is talking to people in my community. When I ask what is important to them, they don't talk about policy; they talk about their families, their friends and their futures. They're worried, especially those with children. They worry about the world their children will inhabit. They worry about the cost of housing, whether their children will be able to find good jobs or afford to buy a home and raise a family. They worry about climate change and the impact it will have on future generations. They worry about our economy, about our country's debt, where we are heading, and about what slow growth means for the next generation. They worry about what the future will look like for their kids. They worry about the fairness of our generation benefitting at the expense of the next.

Many of these problems have their roots in our tax policies. Our tax settings fail to encourage investment and innovation, so we experience slow economic and wage growth. Our tax settings don't balance the budget, don't provide a growth dividend, don't help us decarbonise our economy or pay down our debt. We don't think critically about the effectiveness of our spending, so we have fewer opportunities, a smaller economy and lower living standards. These are the challenges we're failing to grapple with. The longer we put off action, the harder the challenges become because our economy and our country are changing. The population is ageing, the workforce is shrinking, and technology is reshaping entire industries. Our tax system needs to change too. It's already unable to deliver the revenue we need. The problem will worsen over time as more of our population ages out of the workforce and their contribution to public finances declines. The burden of covering the cost of government will fall on a smaller and smaller share of workers, so our children will need to pay significantly more tax than we do today but will get less for it. It is not fair to the next generation to bear the burden of our retirements, or for us to keep putting off the problem and leaving the hard work of structural reform to them. We have created this problem; we need to fix it.

I had hoped this parliament would pursue significant economic reform, but the political will has been lacking. The major parties are so worried about being wedged, about scoring points off each other, they can't deliver the reforms we need. So next week I'll be holding tax roundtables with experts, stakeholders, business groups, parliamentarians and members of our community. As the member for Indi and Warringah have shown, on public integrity and climate action, real change can come from the crossbench. We can raise awareness of the challenges facing our society. We can find opportunities for consensus based reform, and I can drive reform in this place, because I don't care or worry about point scoring and political wedging. Wentworth sent me to parliament to make a difference. Tax reform has been in the too-hard basket for too long. It's my job to get it out of the basket and onto the agenda. It's time for us to do what our voters elected us to do: work to make our country a better place tomorrow than it is today.