Page 3553 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 18 August 2010
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When Mr Rattenbury got up, when he started his speech, he said, “Mr Smyth waved around the document.” I will wave it again. Yes, I have got your policies. We have got you. These are your policies. These are your words—cuts to the private health rebate, cuts to education, greater taxes. There is a little corker up the back: “We will put the company tax rate back up to 33 per cent.” This morning we were championing small business and enterprise, but we forgot to mention in that debate that we are going to put the tax rate up. That is what the Greens are about, and that is what this debate is about today.
Mr Rattenbury did not mention their costings, of course. I have had the discussion. In fact, I was asked by staffers out in the anteroom about costings and things we were doing. I said, “Where are your costings?” “Not our responsibility. We are not Bob Brown’s office.” Perhaps one of the Greens can bring us down their costings. When Bob Brown was asked about the costings of his policies today, his first defence was that “Treasury did not want to do it for us”. I do not know whether that means that they have not done their costings, but Treasury is not going to waste their time on them. And then, when a journalist asked for a copy of them, he said, “Well, I can give you an outline of our costings.” An outline? I am not sure what an outline means to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, but an outline can be a very vague thing, particularly when you are talking about billions of dollars in taxes.
Remember that the Greens want to go back to the original superprofits tax. They want more tax on mining. The Greens want death duties. That is what it is. When you look at what they are saying in their economics section, you will see that they want to return to death duties. It is slightly more detailed than the promise to abolish the 30 per cent private health rebate, but they want to introduce an estate tax with full provisions to protect the family farm, the family home and the small business with a threshold of $5 million with indexation.
I am not sure what that means. What it means is that there is a new tax coming courtesy of the Greens—a tax Australian jurisdictions got rid of about 30 years ago. But no: back to the future with the Greens; we are going to put this tax back in place.
On page 80 of their promises, at point 29, under “Taxation”, they have got:
… return the company tax rate to 33% and broaden the company tax base by reducing tax concessions.
So there is a big tax grab here. That is the problem with the Greens. It is interesting. There is an editorial from the Financial Review that talks about the Greens. It talks about the effects—
Ms Hunter: Point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Smyth, resume your seat, please. Stop the clocks, please. Ms Hunter?
Ms Hunter: My understanding is that Mr Smyth rose to speak to the amendment that has been put forward by Mrs Dunne. He seems to be floating off into all sorts of other
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