Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise, like my Labor colleagues, to oppose outright the Treasury Laws Amendment (Enterprise Tax Plan No. 2) Bill 2017. I think it has been very clear for some time now that federal Labor is absolutely opposed to these big business tax cuts going through. We've fought them from the very beginning, when the government first introduced this bill and talked about these tax cuts, and we will fight them to the bitter end.

There are a number of reasons that collectively we will be opposing this bill. Principally it's on economic grounds but it's also on the basis of the social impacts that this bill would have on Australians. I do want to talk about those impacts in this contribution but I also want to speak about one of the other reasons that, as a Labor senator for Queensland, I will be opposing this bill, which is the very limited benefits that this bill and the big business tax cuts it seeks to usher in will have for my home state of Queensland.

Beginning with that, today an article in the Brisbane Courier-Mail highlighted exactly why this bill has so little to offer my home state of Queensland. Based on research by the Australia Institute, which was built on figures from the Taxation Office and the Department of Finance, the article in today's Courier-Mail said that only eight per cent of the companies that stand to benefit from this bill and the tax cuts that it ushers in are based in Queensland—eight per cent of the businesses. And that's assuming that we believe the government's arguments that anyone will benefit from these tax cuts. As I will say later in this contribution, I think it's highly dubious to say that there will be any benefit whatsoever arising from these tax cuts, either to businesses themselves or to the broader economy and Australians in general. But, even if we allow the government the indulgence of saying that this bill and the tax cuts that it ushers in will have some economic benefit, only eight per cent of the companies that stand to benefit from these tax cuts are based in Queensland.

As I have often said in this chamber, on this issue and on other issues, whether it be labour hire, poor regional communications, poor regional infrastructure, or cuts to hospitals, schools and training in the regions, you really do have to wonder why it is that the LNP—being the party that holds by far the majority of Queensland's federal lower house seats and that is the dominant force in the Senate coming from Queensland—continues to support policies like this which have such limited benefit to our home state of Queensland. Surely, if our LNP senators and our LNP members of parliament from Queensland were actually doing their job in standing up for residents and businesses right across Queensland, they would be joining with Labor, opposing this bill and opposing the tax cuts that will overwhelmingly go to big businesses headquartered in Sydney and Melbourne and the states that those cities fall in.

It actually gets even worse when you break down these figures by federal electorate. This is something that I undertook some time ago, and I commissioned some research from the Parliamentary Library, based on statistics from the Taxation Office and the Australian Bureau of Statistics. It was very revealing to see how many businesses, based in various electorates across Queensland, will actually stand to benefit from these tax cuts. Mr Acting Deputy President, if only eight per cent of the companies that will benefit are based anywhere in Queensland, it won't surprise you that so few companies based in regional Queensland stand to gain anything whatsoever from these tax cuts.

For starters, I will just focus on the most marginal federal electorates in Queensland. Again, even if the LNP members that hold these seats don't actually agree with the economics which show that this is not something worth doing, or even if they don't agree that it's a bad thing for society to keep heaping money towards big businesses at the expense of ordinary people—even if they don't accept those arguments—the sheer politics of this proposal from the government should tell them that voting against it is the right thing to do. The electorate of Herbert is based on Townsville and is a marginal seat, held and represented very strongly by Cathy O'Toole. There are only 11 businesses headquartered in that electorate which would gain anything from these tax cuts, if they do go through. In the electorate of Forde, which covers parts of Logan and the northern end of the Gold Coast—where my electorate office is based—there are only 10 companies which would gain anything from these tax cuts. In the electorate of Capricornia, centred on Rockhampton and across Central Queensland, only eight businesses would gain from this tax cut. In the electorate of Leichhardt, which takes in Cairns and Cape York, seven companies would benefit from these company tax cuts. In the electorates of Dawson, based in Mackay and the area between Mackay and Townsville, and Petrie, the electorate on the north side of Brisbane, six businesses in each electorate would gain anything from these tax cuts.

I might just pick up something there. The fact that there is such a limited benefit to those two electorates may be why we've seen very vocal comments opposing these company tax cuts from the LNP members representing these electorates. Some time ago, when this bill was listed for debate, the member for Dawson, George Christensen, as is his wont, was out there in the media, and reports were surfacing about things that he'd said in the National party room querying whether the government should continue to support these tax cuts. To me, it was coincidental that he made these comments only days after I'd been in his electorate, advertising to all and sundry that only six businesses based in his electorate would actually gain any benefit from these tax cuts. We know old George Christensen, the member for Dawson, is nothing if not weak willed; a little bit of pressure forces him to come down to Canberra and have the wobblies. But we always know that he'll actually back the government when it comes to the crunch anyway.

More recently, the member for Petrie, Luke Howarth, was in the media. In fact, I was doing an interview with him on Sky News, that high-rating program where we sometimes get together and talk about politics. After the Longman by-election train wreck, Luke Howarth was one of the very first members of this government to query whether the government should be persisting with these company tax cuts. He was saying that they should bring them back into this house, get them knocked over and then move on. I suspect that both Luke Howarth and George Christensen have made comments against these company tax cuts because they know that so few businesses based in their electorates actually stand to gain anything.

Longman is a seat that has been talked about a lot lately, because of the by-election that was held there, and we, on the Labor side, make no apologies for having made the company tax cuts absolutely pivotal to that campaign. We were out there telling every single resident and business in Longman that the company tax cuts would have very little benefit there and that they would be paid for by more and more cuts to local services. The reason we were confident in doing so is that the figures from the Parliamentary Library showed that only three businesses based in the electorate of Longman would gain anything from these company tax cuts.

But, of all of these statistics about Queensland electorates, my favourites are the statistics about the electorate of Dickson. We've been hearing a lot about the electorate of Dickson in recent days, and I suspect we'll continue to do so, because we all know that the member for Dickson, Mr Dutton, is sharpening up the knife ready for a change of jobs. He's ready to take on the leadership because he knows that, under Mr Turnbull, this government is stuffed. He knows that, under Mr Turnbull, he's going to lose his seat. Guess how many of the businesses based in the electorate of Dickson will gain anything from these company tax cuts? It's a big, fat zero. Not one business based in the electorate of Dickson, held by Mr Dutton, will actually gain anything from these company tax cuts. Not one business based in the electorate of Dickson will have its taxes cut as a result of these tax cuts going through.

Whether we're talking about Dickson, with no local businesses gaining anything, or Capricornia in Central Queensland, where the huge number of eight businesses will gain something—and that's if you accept the government's argument that anyone will actually gain anything—there is so little benefit for anywhere in Queensland that you have to wonder why it is that LNP senators like Senator McGrath and others keep coming down here—Senator Smith, you're not from Queensland, but we'd think about taking you, maybe! You have to wonder why LNP senators keep coming down here and rolling over for members, like the Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull, based in Sydney. Those electorates may gain something from this, but there's nothing in this for Queensland.

Yet again, it's another instance of the LNP selling out Queensland, just as they have on many other issues, whether it be failing to do anything about labour hire and casualisation of the work force, particularly in regional Queensland, whether it be failing to do anything about regional infrastructure and regional communications in Queensland or whether it be the cuts to hospitals, schools, TAFEs and pensions that they're agreeing to to pay for these company tax cuts. Why does Queensland have such weak members of parliament from the LNP? They just consistently turn up in Canberra, take their instructions from the Prime Minister and other Liberals from Sydney and Melbourne, and then, in the process, completely shaft the people of Queensland. Unless they start waking up to themselves, there's no doubt that a lot of them are going to face exactly what the LNP copped in Longman, and that is a massive rebuff and a massive plunge in their primary vote, and many of them are going to be looking for new jobs after the next election.

The research that I cited from the Australia Institute, which came out in TheCourier-Mail today, also showed that, of the eight per cent only of businesses based in Queensland who would stand to gain anything here, nearly half of them are in the finance, insurance and super sectors—

Debate interrupted.