Mr HAMILTON (Groom) (20:05): Thank you, Deputy Speaker Vasta, for the opportunity to talk about tax cuts and the Treasury Laws Amendment (Cost of Living Tax Cuts) 2024. One of the reasons I entered politics, and one of the reasons I’m on this side of the House, is that we’re not new to this, we’re true to this. This is what we have always done. I have to confess that I love tax cuts; this is the heart of our policy. To quote the great economist, Sir MixaLot, ‘I like tax cuts and I cannot lie’. This is what we’re here to do.
It has been fascinating listening to the Labor speakers questioning our position on this, as if there’s some weird ulterior motive that they need the Australian people to see in our position here. We’re exactly where we’ve always been: voting for lower taxes. That is what we do and that’s what the Australian people trust us to do. It’s what we’ve always done. But when it comes to tax cuts and Labor, they have all the credibility of a 13-year-old wearing a Cold Chisel T-shirt. This isn’t what they grew up with, it isn’t their thing. This isn’t their bag. It’s a bit fashionable, leading into the Dunkley by-election, but this isn’t who they are. This isn’t what made them. This is clearly a political motive that they’ve enjoyed jumping into. Obviously, the polling is a little bit tight there in Dunkley, but we’ll get back to that.
Being a hospitable person, as all good people in the Groom electorate are, my message to those opposite is: welcome to tax cuts. Welcome! Enjoy your stay! I hope you enjoy it, I hope you get to see the full benefits of what this side of the House has always talked about. Everyone hates a tourist, though, so I’m going to try and help the Labor government come to terms with their tax cuts and give them a little history of the Liberal Party’s tax cuts throughout the years. Again, this is what we do. Let’s go back to the Menzies era. He abolished land tax and he abolished entertainment tax. Perfectly sensible taxes to abolish. He introduced tax deductions for school fees and allied expenditure, and tax concessions for married pensioners. Right from the beginning, back in 1939, before we even had full control of income tax in Australia, this was what we were doing. When we talk about the ‘golden age’ of the Liberal Party and the lower taxes we deployed, it comes through in the numbers. Tax revenues under Menzies were around 18 per cent of GDP. We weren’t big spenders and we weren’t interventionists. That allowed us to be low-taxing and it allowed Australians, during that period which saw the greatness realised in Australia, to keep more of what they earned.
But when did that number change, from 18 up to the 22s and 23s that we’ve seen since? It was of course under Whitlam, who had a very different approach to taxes. But let’s skip forward to another Liberal government, the Fraser government, which introduced the abolition of state and gift duties. These are what we otherwise talk about as the death taxes—the means of redistributing wealth that threatens everyone who has put in a hard day’s work to build a better life for their kids. We abolished those. What a fantastic tax to abolish! And because we continued in the tradition of lower taxes, we were able to take measures like introducing the family income supplement and the lone fathers benefit, and a means test on pensioners replaced by a simpler income test. We were able to take these steps to better look after Australia because we had control of the economy. We step forward again to another golden era, the Howard government, which provided the largest tax relief in Australian history at the time—around $40 billion a year of savings to the Australian people—and introduced a much fairer tax system from 2000, with the introduction of the GST. Here’s a wonderful lesson in what to do when you change your tax policy in government. It’s been raised a couple of times: ‘What about the GST? Howard changed his mind on the GST.’ He did. He went to the ’96 election saying he wouldn’t introduce it. Times changed, and he changed his position. He went back to the Australian people and sought a mandate at the 1998 election. He had the guts to put his conviction on the line and say to the Australian people: ‘I have changed my mind. Judge me on this.’ And what did they do? They supported him. They supported him and he introduced the GST. He followed that with further tax relief in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007. Interestingly, with the tax relief he provided in 2007, the incoming Labor Prime Minister had the good sense to keep it. Even Kevin Rudd was smart enough to see the benefits of what we were doing and not turn his back on it. I never thought I’d say this, but it’s ‘Rudd one, Mr Albanese zero’ on that front.
What’s fascinating is that, during that time, from 1996 to 2007, we saw a growth in real wages of 21.5 per cent. The current government talks a lot about real wage growth, but it just seems to go backwards. This is how you do it. Howard offers us the way forward: lower taxes. He provided two more tranches of tax relief to Labor’s capital gains tax, which equated to about $10 billion a year of savings for Australian taxpayers, and cash refunds on franking credits—there’s a scary term; I hope that doesn’t come up again at the next election—which were worth $5 billion a year to Australians. Mr Howard saved the Australian taxpayer $75 billion a year, paid off Labor’s debt and ran 10 consecutive budget surpluses. That’s a vastly different approach to what we’re seeing now—some integrity around what you’re saying and what you’re doing, and delivering on lower taxes, which is what we’ve always done.
Let’s skip forward again. Let’s go to the Abbott government. It repealed Labor’s carbon tax and repealed Labor’s mining tax. It delivered the lowest small-business tax rate in half a century and scrapped Labor’s bank deposit tax. There’s a theme here. We come in and we get rid of taxes that Labor introduced. Labor introduces more taxes, so we come in and get rid of more taxes that Labor introduced. There’s a symmetry to it—a poetry, almost.
The Turnbull government brought in the largest income tax cuts in Australian history. He beat Howard. Say what you will about that man; that’s a pretty good record—beating John Howard on tax cuts. That’s fantastic. There were tax cuts for small and medium-sized enterprises, helping 3.2 million businesses, employing 6.7 million Australians, to get ahead and create more jobs. Fascinatingly, not only did he deliver the greatest tax relief Australia has ever seen; he introduced new laws that actually did close loopholes—it wasn’t just a marketing scheme; he did close loopholes for multinationals—which resulted in an additional $4 billion in tax raised from those multinationals each year. He actually did something about this. Because he lowered taxes he was then able to take other steps that made Australia a better place. It’s fascinating what happens when you follow the Liberal principle of lower taxes, which we have always done.
Then we get to the last coalition government. In the 2021 budget, the government brought forward its stage 2 tax cuts. It realised what was happening and took a step to address the issues of the day, which meant that more than 11 million taxpayers received a tax cut backdated to 1 July 2020. In the 2021-22 budget the government extended the low- and middle-income tax offset for an additional year. This is a point that I will labour, because we’ve heard repeatedly how great this muddled up, Labor-ised stage 3 tax cut is, delivering $800 relief to people. What those opposite fail to tell you is that there was $6,000 in relief to the same people delivered under stage 1 and stage 2. Why? It’s because that is what we always do and what we have always done. We also had the low- and middle-income tax offset, and, even further, we introduced the $420 cost-of-living tax offset. In 2021-22 the company tax rate for businesses was reduced to 25 per cent—the lowest in 50 years—and for unincorporated businesses the tax offset was increased to 16 per cent, capped at $1,000. We did exactly what we said were going to do. We are the party of lower taxes. We always have been and we always will be. But what we’re not going to do is make perfect the enemy of the good. We put together a comprehensive plan, we were honest with the Australian people and we took it to the election. We took it to a couple of elections, actually. We took it to elections over and over again, and we stood by it. So did Labor. They took it to two elections. Do you know what the fascinating thing is? There’s a great differential I want to highlight here. Going into that 2019 election, at least Mr Shorten was very honest. The Australian people knew exactly what he was going to do with taxes. They knew exactly what he was going to do with taxes, and they voted against his plan to have higher taxes and higher spending. Mr Albanese, on the other hand, I think was very deceptive. I think he misled the Australian people. He said: ‘Yes, sure. We’re going to stick with this. It will be all fine and dandy.’ That was until push came to shove and we had the unfortunate events that brought us to a Dunkley by-election, and now there’s necessity on the table.
We can see the evidence of how this became such a political issue for this government. In the train wreck interview on Monday night, the Treasurer confirmed the government didn’t want to wait until after the Dunkley by-election to announce its changes. Then we had the Prime Minister this morning calling on our coalition to vote against his own bill. What an extraordinary set of events—a prime minister calling on the opposition to vote against his own bill. Why would you do this? Oh my goodness, why would you do it? I’m shocked. I’m dismayed. Tickle me pink. It’s politics. It’s gut-level, base politics, and that’s all this is.
The funny part is, to go back to the start of it, the questioning of what our position is here, as if there’s some strange motive from us. No, we are the party that we were in the Menzies era, when in 1942 the federal government took ownership of all income taxes and Menzies set us on a course of lower taxes, of lower spending, of putting the trust and the dollars earnt into the hands of Australians and of allowing them to guide the growth of our nation. Our greatest growth indeed was under that magnificent stewardship. We are the same party we were through Fraser. We are the same party we were under Howard, who also faced the challenges of: what do you do when you change your position? Do you go tell Treasury and then, after telling Treasury to prepare the ground for these changes, repeatedly say to the Australian people, ‘We are not making changes,’ and deliberately mislead the Australian people on what your intentions are with the stage 3 tax cuts? Do you do that? Or do you take the Howard option of saying to the Australian people: ‘Circumstances have changed. My position has changed. On that basis, I come to you humbly, asking for your support at the election’? That’s what Mr Howard did. It’s a pathway that Mr Albanese found beyond him. He wanted to convince the Australian people: ‘No, no, no, no, no. Don’t worry about the trust issue. Don’t worry about trust. Just come along here, and we’ll all be fine.’ They are very different paths.
We are the party we were under Mr Abbott, who immediately repealed the conga line of new taxes introduced under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments. We are the party we were under Mr Turnbull, who rose to the challenge of introducing tax cuts greater than Mr Howard’s. We are the party we were under Mr Morrison, the last government, who acknowledged the challenges of the day, brought forward stage 2 tax cuts, introduced the low- to medium-income tax offset and introduced the cost-of-living tax offset to reward those who were carrying that extra burden during those tough years of COVID. We are that party and we will always be that party.
I welcome the Labor Party’s short vacation over here in ‘tax cut land’. Enjoy it! Have a look around—we have a great history, and we’re proud of our history of tax cuts. We will stay here and we will be here in by-elections and in general elections. We will be here for generations to come in opposition and in government, because this is what we do. This is what separates us from Labor. We believe—and not just believe, we act—that allowing Australian taxpayers to keep as much of the money they earn as they can is the right thing for Australia. We will continue to be there.
The government can play its tricks; it can try to do its wedge politics and it can try and goad us into voting against their plan. We will not make perfect the enemy of the good. If there’s a step forward to take, we will take it, but we will not fail to point out to the Australian people that they’ve been misled and that trust in leadership is an important thing. I remember an election—goodness me!—about two years ago now, where integrity was a big part of that. Do you remember that, member for Wide Bay? It was a big part of that election. I remember hearing about integrity, and I remember a Prime Minister who promised integrity. I think he’s gotten lost along the way. I hope he finds his way back.
