Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

The Ansett levy was on airfares, paid principally by those corporate multinational giants who fly all around the place. The shipping container levy was, I understand, on shipping containers—not on individuals.

I will repeat my question, and do not bother giving me another tirade of ‘the Howard government had levies’. I seem to recall you opposed every single one of them, Senator Sherry, very volubly and aggressively. You have had a bit of a conversion on the way to the market, have you not? Do you not see a difference between putting a levy on containers paid for, perhaps, by those multinational companies and putting a levy on the incomes of individuals, or between putting a levy on the incomes of individuals but not on the incomes of multinational giants ripping off profits and taking them out of Australia and sending those profits overseas? I hasten to add, for Hansard and for the thousands of people who I know will be reading this and following it online, that I am not attacking the multinationals for making profits and paying shareholders. But that is the line you get from the Labor Party Left and from the Greens.

So I will repeat my question, Minister, and hope that you might give me an answer. I am not after the policy rationale for levies; I am after the policy rationale for why in this instance you would charge individuals—that is small business men and wage earners—with the cost of rebuilding Queensland because the Queensland state Labor government was too incompetent to manage its finances to do it itself, the same as every other state does. Why is the levy on individuals and not on the large multinational companies? I will repeat it for you, Minister, in case you have forgotten, as you seem to have missed the question last time. If you took it out of general revenue then the really wealthy in the community would pay more because of our progressive taxation system, and the big multinational companies and the big mining companies, which Senator Brown said are the cause of the floods and the cyclones, would be paying. But under this legislation supported by you and the Greens, those big multinationals, who caused, according to Senator Brown, the cyclone and the floods, are getting away scot-free. Can you please explain the policy rationale? Do not give me a tirade of: ‘The Howard government did it. We opposed it but because you did it and got it through we are going to do it here.’ Tell me what the policy rationale is for individuals—the butcher, the baker, my motor mechanic—having to pay this levy while Coles, Woolworths and the multinational mining companies do not have to make a contribution to the rebuilding of Queensland.