Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

After an hour and a half of going around and around in circles in this chamber before question time and going around and around in circles in committee last night, two minutes before question time the minister finally decided to come off his high horse and answer the questions that quite legitimately had been posed by senators. I refer specifically to the question of whether he could give an ironclad guarantee on behalf of the government that all Australians who have been subject to natural disasters and who are receiving natural disaster assistance payments from the Commonwealth will be exempt under this legislation. Two minutes before question time he finally answered, ‘Yes.’ He could not bring himself to resolve that issue earlier.

The reason that the opposition have been persistently asking questions in relation to this is that the information available to the people of Australia on the Treasury website up to this point in time has been saying that an exemption is only available to those who have been the victim of a natural disaster which is a flood event. I am very pleased that finally the minister has provided clarification to the Senate on this. I cannot quite understand why it took him so long. He could not have had that many other legislative priorities to deal with. Having noted the minister’s assurance in the context of the conflicting information that has been in the public domain, the opposition are happy to leave it here.

However, we are obviously not happy with flat tax. We do not support it. We will vote against it. We urge the Senate to vote against it. We think that the way this flat tax is being put forward is not the way to handle our public finances. It is an ad hoc Labor Party tax which will be imposed on all Australians earning more than $50,000 a year, unless they are in one of those areas that are exempt. We do not think that this is the way to run the financial affairs of the nation. To those people who may be listening, I make the point again that Liberal-National senators stand for lower taxes. This government will always look for an opportunity to whack on another Labor Party tax whenever they think they can get away with it politically.