Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm not going to go to your interjections. If I misspoke, we'll clean it up afterwards. The narrow and inflexible thought process from those opposite is a missed opportunity from those opposite. We have looked to find someone, through a merit based process, who can give us that breadth of thinking. We are not going to shy away from that. Some of the accusations are just ludicrous.

Now, yes, Ms Wood has indeed advocated various things that the Labor government may not wish to pursue. We are not looking for somebody who has a particular way of thinking; we're looking for someone with an open, inquiring way of thinking to boost the efforts of the Productivity Commission so that it gives us the kind of broad thinking that we need to help develop how we're going in this country, because we have had 10 pretty shabby years. And, no, we don't need somebody who agrees with everything that the Treasurer says. That is not what we're looking for at all.

To echo the comments of my colleagues, Labor has no plans for an inheritance tax. That's just the fact of it. We do not. That is not where we're going. Minister Gallagher has been very clear. Senator O'Neill has been very clear. The Treasurer has been pretty clear. This is not what we're looking at the pathway of. So we can just put that one to bed. Just because one person who is in the employ of a part of the government has a particular thought does not make it government policy. Maybe in your day it did, on the other side of the chamber, when you employed in a narrow fashion, but that's not where we are. We're not afraid of ideas, we're not afraid of debating things, and we're not afraid of putting people who have excellent backgrounds and excellent credentials and who will challenge the thinking into positions, as we have by putting Ms Wood in the Productivity Commission. She is an excellent appointment.