Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is one of the greatest privileges of someone who represents this place to stand and speak on the appropriation bills. Unlike other bills that come before the House, which may have an effect on certain parts of your community, Appropriation Bill (No. 1) and Appropriation Bill (No. 2), which we're going to be debating, concurrently touch everyone in our community. They touch our businesses, they touch our first home owners, they touch our farmers and they touch those who are aspirant and who want to build careers, build businesses and employ people in our community. I feel compelled to come in here and share the frustrations that I'm hearing from those people who are feeling deceived and who are feeling that, at one stage, they had confidence that, when the government said something, it could be trusted. That is no longer the case.

These appropriation bills give me the opportunity to talk about the deceitful taxes—the taxes that the Australian public, and my electorate, were told were not going to be imposed on them. They were told not just once or twice that they weren't going to be imposed on them. When a journalist asked the Prime Minister, 'Are you going to introduce a capital gains tax?' the response was, 'For the 50th time, no.' That was unequivocal. Before the election, Australians knew that there was not going to be a tax, but then, immediately after, it appears in the budget. Unfortunately for us on this side, when claims like that are made by government members—leaders of the party, the Treasurer—it has an effect and a stench on all of us in this House. It is a pox on all of our houses. If you were to straw poll people in the Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne mall and ask them, 'Do politicians tell the truth?' nine out of 10 of them would say no. They all think we lie. It's unfortunate that these pieces of evidence—saying one thing before an election and doing another—are becoming too often a feature of the Australian Labor Party's modus operandi.

Winston Churchill, the former English prime minister, once said of taxes: 'Trying to tax a nation into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket trying to lift himself up by the handle. You can't do it.' Those on the other side take a different view. We don't. Our philosophy within the Liberal and National parties is lower taxes. Our philosophy is smaller government. I'm glad that there are members in the chamber to hear these contributions and to be reminded.

I was reminded by my dear partner, who is an English teacher. She prompted me, in this current political climate, to reread a book that I read in senior. It was written by a famous author by the name of George Orwell. The title of the book is Nineteen Eighty-Four. It was written in the 1970s. It's a great book. It's heavy reading for a 16- or17-year-old, but, when you revisit it, you really understand the nuances of how this government is using the duplicitous meanings of the Ministry of Truth and its core function of altering history. One of the main character's key tasks in the book was to work at the Ministry of Truth. His job was to go into a room and find newspaper clippings and rewrite them to the government's narrative. If they said one thing one day and then backflipped on it, they would go in and rewrite all the clippings so that, when history reviewed itself, those claims had no evidence. They were removed from history.

One of his other tasks was to falsify statistics, changing production figures to show the economy as always improving when it clearly was not. We only need to look at the Australian economy and see the heartache and how difficult it is for young people to get into a home. I have five children. My oldest has a home. The task of the other two following is becoming even more difficult under this government. Propaganda creation was another task this character had, producing all literature, news, music, drama and entertainment to the season. Propaganda is often used in warfare. We're using it currently in our conflicts. But never have I seen propaganda in the press and propaganda from those opposite to the extent that we are seeing at the moment.

Let me remind you what some of that propaganda looks like. Only a couple of years back, Australians were told that they were going to get $275 cash back on their electricity bills and that electricity rates were going to go down. This is newspeak. This is the core function of George Orwell's Ministry of Truth. We are told that, if they spend more money on renewables, electricity prices will go down. We are told that. It's like groupthink. 'We must invest more. We must invest more.' The reality is our power bills have two parts to them. One is the power price. The other one is the transition and the distribution costs—the cost of gold plating the transmission lines in the renewable sector. There's no country in the world, including Germany, who has the highest rates of renewable energy, with evidence to suggest that electricity prices are going to come down under the current trajectory we are following. It's the Ministry of Truth with George Orwellian overtones. There's the persistent thinking that, if we just keep on telling the Australian public it's going to get better, they'll believe us.

We were told before the election, 'My word is my bond.' At the previous election we were told, 'My word is my bond,' when it came to the stage 3 tax cuts. That may not mean a lot to people on the street, but, when you earn more money, you cannot escape tax bracket creep, where you go up through the tax brackets. In stage 3, we were going to freeze them and make those amounts smaller so that Australians got to keep more of their money. Those on the other side gave a commitment that they would not touch them. But, as soon as they got there, they took $26 billion worth of savings, which we were going to return back to Australians, and kept it for their own spending.

Remember the propaganda when we were told it was going to be easier under Labor: 'Vote for us; it's going to be easier.' I think we've seen 18 increases in interest rates. That's about $26,000 extra you're paying if you've got a mortgage. Can I mention these capital gains taxes while we're talking about houses. I'm going to ask the Australian public who are listening a really simple question. If we increase, through machinations in this place, the cost of doing business for those who wish to invest in the residential sector—let's call them landlords—one of two things is going to happen. They're going to put their prices up, which is the rent, or they're going to put their prices down. There's a group of 10- to 12-year-olds upstairs there. If you could hear what I just said, put your fingers up if you think prices are going to go up and put your fingers down if you think they're going to go down. They're going to go up—brilliant. The gallery knows that prices are going to go up. All Australians know that prices are going to go up. So why do it? Why shackle the next generation of people trying to buy a home with increased costs?

When you look at why the government are doing it, you understand it is because they are addicted to spending. You've heard us come in here and say time and time and time again that, when the Australian Labor Party runs out of its own money, it will come looking for yours. This budget is evidence that they're coming looking for your money. Not only are they taxing aspiration but they are looking for your money if you are trying to save for a house. It's my kids, who had a couple of dollars and were possibly getting three or four per cent return from a bank and said, 'Maybe I can get a couple of extra bucks if I invest in ETFs in the share market.' Do you know what these guys did? They didn't sit back and congratulate them and say: 'Keep going. You're getting closer to the next house.' They saw it as an opportunity to go: 'Thank you; we'll have a piece of that as well. We'll have a piece of crushing your aspiration, and then, through the ministry of truth, we'll tell you that it's going to be good for you. We're going to make it harder for you to get into the market, and we're going to tell you it's easier.' It's Orwellian.

I remember the tragedy that happened at the Bondi massacre and the royal commission that went into that, and somehow we couldn't face the truth as to where the perpetrator—the government of the day wanted to suggest that this was extremist activity from the far right. No-one in Australia believed that. My God!

Ladies and gentlemen—electricity grids. We've spoken about the two costs. We've spoken about interest rate rises, but at the core of this is Labor's spending. The core of it is that the Australian government spending is amongst some of the highest in the developed world as a percentage of the GDP. The evidence of this is when this capital gains tax was announced, we saw a 10 per cent decrease in the Commonwealth Bank share price. If you don't bank with the Commonwealth Bank, it doesn't affect you. But I'd ask you to pause. You may not bank with the Commonwealth Bank, but I can assure you that part of your superannuation is made up by your super fund investing in the Commonwealth Bank. So when you go to look for your returns and they are slightly diminished, when you go looking for your returns from the Commonwealth Bank and they're down, and you're scratching your head and saying, 'Why?' you will know that it was a result of poor government policy.

On the weekend, we saw property rates, clearance rates, down nine per cent. Those on the other side in question time today hailed that as a great success. Confidence is low. I repeat, if we take landlords out of the market, there is only one way costs for people renting are going to go, and that is up. Labor know this, and they'll keep young people out of getting into the market.

We ask our Australian public, the people in our electorates, to tighten their belts. We ask them to tighten their belts. Debate on Appropriation Bill (No.1) and Appropriation Bill (No.2) is exactly the time when the opposition speaks to the government and says to them, 'It is about time that government tightens its belt.' The government needs to live within its means. No longer can we keep going back to the trough of taxes. No longer can we go back to the trough of borrowing money from overseas countries where we are accruing an interest component that is beyond the comprehension. There was a point in history when we on this side left no debt for a Labor government. Today we are looking down the barrel of a trillion dollars. It is a shame, and I will finish where I started. I want to thank my Christine for encouraging me to re-read George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, where I remember intently the workings of the Ministry of Truth. Shame!

Debate adjourned.