Corporate Tax Cuts and Government Failure | Senator Hanson Speech

SPEECH TRANSCRIPT AND VIDEO

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Firstly, I would like to explain to the chamber that my absence for the second reading division was simply unfortunate and not designed to give any further time to this debate, given my very clear stance on not supporting any further corporate tax cuts. We find ourselves with an amendment that Treasurer Scott Morrison claims was given to me last week. Let me make it clear to this chamber that I had not seen this amendment until it was emailed to my office at 12.09 pm today.

This week has been a complete shambles—an embarrassment to every Australian. You’ve got the Liberals knifing each other and Senator Cameron was caught dancing down the corridors with his air tambourine, singing Oh Happy Day. The people are over it. They’re tired of every single one of you urinating their money up against a brick wall. If they could bang your heads against the same wall they would—both of you: Labor and the coalition. You have left the people in this country with a filthy hangover today. When I go shopping, people ask, ‘Why can’t the government help the farmers instead of these big companies?’ They’re right. The bulk of multinationals don’t pay their fair share of tax in this country. People ask me, ‘Why do we send billions overseas in the form of foreign aid?’ It’s a good question, isn’t it, especially when every single one of you drives past at least six homeless people sleeping near Outback Jacks on Northbourne Avenue here in Canberra. And let’s not forget the other 105,000 homeless people we have in this country. I’ve got cane farmers across Queensland, who want a code of conduct. Nothing else—no money, just surety for their industry, which employs tens of thousands of Australian workers and pumps $2 billion in cash through this economy.

Why aren’t we looking after those people? Aren’t these tax cuts about saving jobs?

I’m tired of the people of this country sitting at their dining-room tables saying: ‘Did you hear what those clowns in Canberra did today? They don’t care about us.’ They are talking about us. Tonight I’m voting with the lion’s share of people in Rockhampton. I’m voting with the bulk of mums and dads in Tamworth. I’m voting with the majority of people in Coal Point, Townsville, Ipswich, Toowoomba, Beerwah, Bowen, Kilcoy, thousands of towns across my home state of Queensland and thousands more across the country. The majority of people don’t want these tax cuts for businesses with turnover greater than $50 million. You know why they don’t want me to support these tax cuts? You refused to fix the PRRT. Let me explain the PRRT. It is a tax imposed on the gas offshore in North West Australia. This is 15 per cent plus. Over the period of time that we’ve had the PRRT, companies like Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell have now cumulated $290 billion in tax credits, so that they say they will not be paying tax in this country for a long time to come.

Countries like Japan are making more money in excise tax out of ships with our gas on them, around $3 billion, than we do. We made about $800 million off our sales of approximately $55 billion this year. You refuse to collect billions in royalties from Commonwealth waters. Qatar made $26.6 billion in gas and oil sales, and we made $800 million—and you’re worried about investment in this country, that the multinationals won’t come here unless we reduce corporate taxes? I don’t think you have it right. The whole fact is they will come here, because they are not paying the right taxes in the first place. Why wouldn’t they come here?

You refuse to acknowledge that our tax system is different to those of every other country. You made a reference to America, who dropped their rate to 21 per cent. Yes, but their state taxes are between two and 12 per cent on top of that. You don’t refer to their different tax systems. You can’t compare apples with oranges. Every country has a different taxation system. Just because they drop their taxes doesn’t mean that we do. You say they are dropping it every year, and that other countries are going to drop it to 17 per cent. Is this a race to the bottom? Who can give the lowest tax rates, so that we don’t lose the investment? If they are not going to pay taxes in this country, what are we losing? They are only more competitive for the Australian businesses here who are struggling and trying to do the right thing. America has lower wages. That’s another thing. I’m definitely not advocating that we have lower wages in Australia.

What have your free trade agreements done? You have signed away the workers. You talk about more jobs, but your free trade agreements have allowed these multinational companies to bring in their own workers. You are destroying our own workforce. America has half-price energy. There’s your problem. Reduce the cost of energy in Australia, so industries and manufacturing can compete, instead of escalating prices. America has 325 million people in their domestic market and, more importantly, trading partners on their doorstep. There are a combined 450 million people in Canada and South America that they can sell their products to. They have also applied tariffs to imports—fancy that! I recall a younger version of myself calling for tariffs 20 years ago.

These countries protect their homegrown industries—in Australia, we tie our companies up in red tape—and flood our market with cheap junk.

As for suggestions on how to spend the money if you don’t do this, because you’re going to end up with about $4 billion in the coffers, what about long-term-vision projects, infrastructure projects like roads and rail? What about dams and the Bradfield water scheme, which would drought-proof our nation and help the poor farmers out there that are on their knees? What about the watering Australia program to bring the water down from the Territory, the Ord scheme, so we actually water Australia? These are projects that would make our country prosper and help those that are in dire need. This country is not going to grow or move forward if we don’t provide the water that it needs. We have countries like Israel that have put in a watering project that can water their country. But we can’t do it?

There is no vision in this country whatsoever for future generations. What about railway projects like the Carmichael mine and duplication of the Sunshine Coast Railway through to Nambour? Why aren’t we duplicating the Bruce Highway from Brisbane to Cairns for tourism and freight? Coal-fired power stations to produce the dispatchable energy that we need to reduce the power prices in this country; hydro power like the Tully-Millstream project—why aren’t we doing these projects? Where’s the debate on nuclear energy? Why don’t we do that?

I have respectfully listened to the government’s arguments, and I do thank Senator Cormann for his good-natured negotiations. But I cannot support a shift in the threshold to increase further corporate tax cuts, carving out the big four banks. My question is: what about the other banks? They have to answer for the wrong they’ve done to many people across this country, and the damage and the heartache that they’ve caused. It’s more than just the four banks.

My obligation is to the everyday people of this country and to ensure we start paying down the mounting debt. One Nation supported tax cuts up to a $50 million turnover. That’s a cost to the budget of $35 million. We supported the personal tax cuts; that’s another $144 billion. You want to pass these further corporate tax cuts; that’s a further $45 billion. And you’re talking about in eight years time. How do we know the state of this economy in eight years time? How do we know if this country will be able to afford it? How do we know who’s going to be holding the chequebook—because I don’t trust any one of you. I’ve seen it. Under Labor, when it changed over to the coalition, the country was in debt by about $270 billion. Now we’re reaching nearly $600 billion. There has to be a debt ceiling put on, because someone has to curtail your spending. No-one’s talking about future generations and how we’re paying down this debt.

You talk about how it’s going to create jobs. I’ll tell you the only way you will create jobs in this country and get a better, higher wage increase: please work with your state counterparts and investigate reducing payroll tax, which is a bigger impost on business across the nation. That will—it will—stimulate jobs in this country. That’s why I say to you that you can’t guarantee corporate tax cuts are going to create employment and bring higher wages. For a lot of these businesses, what I hear all the time is that the biggest problem in this whole country is payroll tax. I know it’s not a federal issue; it is a state issue. You have to work with the states to compensate them for slowly reducing the payroll tax, which will increase employment. Why would these businesses put more money into their companies and businesses through a corporate tax cut when they know that, if you create more employment and higher wages, that’s going to put them over the threshold and they’re going to be paying more in payroll tax? It needs to stop. Address your free trade agreements and stop these companies bringing in their workers from overseas—and that is actually happening. Ensure that we as a nation can afford this. You haven’t proven that to me.

I’m worried about the future generations and the debt we are going to leave them. You can sit there and promise me all these things, but with all the deals that you may have done in this chamber with the other senators, there is no guarantee of who’s going to be the Prime Minister of this country next week—whether or not it’s going to be Malcolm Turnbull. If we go to an early election, are these deals going to be secure? They possibly won’t be. So, I want to know that the future of this nation is in good hands. I don’t feel that it is.

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