Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Banking and Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

Labor will be opposing this amendment. As Senator Murray would be aware, we have discussed his proposals to index the current tax-free threshold on previous occasions as part of a broader approach that Senator Murray brings to the debate about indexation of thresholds more generally. There is one point I would make about what I think is an inherent contradiction in the approach he is taking, which is to index the current tax-free threshold and then partly pay for it by retaining the top threshold at $150,000. Whilst moving the top threshold from $150,000 to $180,000 is not indexation, it is recognition of the impact of inflation moving into the top bracket. So there is an inherent contradiction. Senator Murray is proposing to directly index the current tax-free threshold but effectively to freeze the top threshold, and that is a contradictory position in Labor’s view.

On previous occasions we have indicated that the matter of the movement of the thresholds should be a matter for budget, from time to time, depending on circumstances, and Labor has not changed its view and we will be opposing the amendments and supporting the budget tax cuts without amendment. This would not come as any surprise to Senator Murray, because I do mention this from time to time when we discuss tax proposals: if the Democrats wanted to advance their argument about indexing of thresholds, why did they not do it as part of the GST negotiations which Senator Murray supported? Most of the Democrats—those still standing, with the exception of one or two—supported its introduction. They had an opportunity to advance, as part of the tax reform process, the GST and the other associated tax changes that occurred then. I do not know whether Senator Murray put that one on the table. If he did, I am not terribly convinced by his negotiating prowess. If you could not achieve it then, I do not think you are going to achieve it today, Senator Murray.

The only other comment I would like to make is in reference to the earlier questions from Senator Murray. I hope that Treasury, and probably the ATO, are able to provide the information that Senator Murray has requested, but he knows, from the long hours we spend at estimates hearings, how difficult it is to obtain information from this government. We know the government has the information—in the forward estimates or the forward projections—but when trying to get an answer from the government, with its secrecy of prepared figures, you just get the response, ‘We don’t publish the figure.’ They have a figure but they do not publish it. So, quite genuinely, I wish you good luck with your request for information, Senator Murray, but on the past performance of this government at estimates hearings, as you and I know, even when the government has figures, if they do not want to publish them they will not produce them, even at estimates. That is a regrettable aspect of secrecy and arrogance that the government have taken on, particularly since they have had control of the Senate.

That is all part of a very tricky process that we know the Prime Minister goes through, particularly in the lead-up to an election. The Prime Minister is very tricky and very cunning. If there is a group in the electorate that he believes has been neglected—as low- and middle-income earners have been in recent years, in terms of tax cuts—