Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Well, firstly, let me ask you, member for Hughes: how much money was that tax expected to produce? It was $49.5 million when the mining tax was first conceived—$49.5 billion. But the reality is that after so much fanfare, after such a lack of consultation and after so much pain and heartache for our miners and our workers, this tax has just produced $340 million. That is just 2½ cents over the last 12 months for every Australian. Talk about redistributing wealth—that was an abject failure. It is not just bad to produce a tax that produces so little revenue but what is so bad about the mining tax and why we needed to act urgently was because those opposite attached $17 billion of expenditure to that tax—$17 billion of expenditure and only $340 million in revenue.

You do not need to be Einstein to realise that you have a budget problem if you have $17 billion of spending and just $340 million of revenue. So we have repealed this mining tax and, by virtue of repealing this mining tax, the budget repair job is well on its way. And more than $50 billion will be the improvement to the nation's finances over the next 10 years—more than $50 billion.

Let me tell you why that is so important: it is because the legacy of those opposite was a fiscal wreck job which we have not seen the likes of in this country before—$667 billion worth of debt. And those opposite say that we are now taking away thousands of dollars from people's super, which is not only a lie but it denies the fact that they have saddled every man, woman and child in Australia with $25,000 of debt. That is the number we should be debating in this chamber—the $25,000 worth of debt that those opposite have saddled every Australian man, woman and child with.

When the member for Maribyrnong—the Leader of the Opposition—comes in here and says, 'You've made broken promises and you will be getting laryngitis because something was said six times,' what about the member for Lilley and Senator Wong, who promised a budget surplus more than 400 times? Do you remember that moment when the member for Lilley came to this dispatch box and said, 'Tonight, I am announcing four years of surpluses'? I must have missed something because we have not seen one of those surpluses. We have just seen consecutive deficits.

The fact is that we knew that we needed to act. It was not just the coalition saying that we needed to act; it was independent players like the Parliamentary Budget Office and the Commission of Audit that projected deficits out as far as the eye could see, and others like the IMF and the OECD which looked at the rate of Australian government spending. The fact is in Australia we do have a structural deficit. When John Howard left office, government spending as a proportion of GDP was 23.1 per cent. Today it is 25.9 per cent. If we do nothing, it goes to 26.5 per cent. Why, those opposite may be asking, is this important? This is important because tax revenue is around 22 per cent. So you have a gap, the member for Sydney would understand, between 22 per cent and 25.9 per cent, and that is just the borrowings year upon year which Labor are saddling the next generation with. We should be having a debate in this place about the notion of fairness and the fact that Labor has saddled the next generation with an unfair level of debt.

Those opposite come in here and say that we are hurting small business. Do you know who hurt small business the most? Those opposite saw more than 400,000 jobs lost in small business. Just sitting with me at the table is a person who worked in small business as a builder. Sitting behind me is someone who worked as an electrician in small business. Also sitting behind me is another colleague and friend who worked as a publican in small business. We are the party of small business. Those opposite are the party of union officials who pay to look after their own. We understand that when you come into this place you cannot be like those opposite who are all care and no responsibility.

I want to remind the House that we went to the election and we told the Australian people that we would abolish the mining tax. That is exactly what we have done. It is not the historic reform that the member for Lilley promised and it no longer deserves to be on the statute books. So I am very proud of the fact that were able to abolish the mining tax.

The third thing I want to note in this place is something that the Prime Minister referred to during question time. It is fact that the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Maribyrnong, has said repeatedly in public that when you move to compulsory superannuation, you are taking money out of the pockets of workers—a point that he refuses to acknowledge in this place. I remind those opposite of the words of their own leader. Neil Mitchell from 3AW, in my home town of Melbourne, when he was talking to the member for Maribyrnong on 21 March 2012, said: 'Okay. So you are saying that the superannuation increases will be paid for by absorbing money out of the wage increases? Bill Shorten: That is the evidence.'

Again, just to prove it was not a fluke the first time, on 3 November 2010, in giving the closing address at the OECD/IOPS Global Forum on private pensions, Bill Shorten said:

Analysis suggests that, over time, Superannuation Guarantee increases have come out of wages, rather than profits.

The members opposite understand that their policy was leaving workers short-changed by taking money out of their pockets. This is a point confirmed by the Henry tax review, which in May 2010 said:

Although employers are required to make superannuation guarantee contributions, employees bear the cost of these contributions through lower wage growth.

There you have it—the Leader of the Opposition damned by his own words and by the Henry tax review, commissioned by the previous government. They destroyed small business in this country, killed hundreds of thousands of jobs and gave us a rotating cycle of small business ministers. Now they have the gall to come into this place and say that when we are fixing their mess it is not a good thing. I am proud of the fact that we have repealed the mining tax and I am sure the Australian people are with us too.

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