Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This obsession with Paul Keating, which those opposite have, baffles me. Consumer sentiment is 10 per cent below where it was at the time of the election and—something that is very dear to the hearts of those on the conservative side—new taxes and charges mean Australians are paying more tax than at any time since the Howard government. They are rising each and every budget year. Some have accused me at different points of taking a communist approach to taxation, and I would remind them that—and they may or not be the finance minister of Australia—under his leadership of Australian finances, new taxes and charges mean that Australians are paying more tax than at any time since the Howard government. Yet we have rampant multinational tax avoidance.

The budget deficit has doubled in the last 12 months and the Australian economy is stuck at below-trend growth of two per cent with annual growth trending down since the Treasurer's damaging first budget. It is also worrying that the nominal growth rate of just 1.8 per cent is the weakest since 1961-62. I understand that this is a government that is desperate to take us back to the 1960s ideologically, but I am disappointed that it needed to take the economy with it. Its claim to be a fiscally conservative government—