The Liberal and Labor parties should hang their heads in shame for supporting the Government’s bill that would see high-income earners handed as much as a $7,225 tax cut. Only the Greens’ Adam Bandt, independent Cathy McGowan and I opposed it.
Yes, that’s right. The members of the House of Representatives today ganged up and voted to give themselves a tax cut of more than $7,000. And they justified it by saying that the vast majority of people will be delighted with an extra $10 a week.
While I would of course like to see tax relief for low-income earners, the plan that the Government put forward is deeply flawed because it would see low-income earners get very little and high-income earners a thumping windfall.
For example according to the Government’s own budget documents, a person earning $200,000 would get a tax cut of over 13 times that of a person on an average wage. This is not a fair plan and it’s not the kind of tax reform that Australia needs.
What Liberal and Labor should be doing is investing this money into essential services like health and education, and boosting government pensions and payments. These are things that would make a real difference to people’s lives.
The madness of this is reflected in the fact that the cost of living for low-income earners will rise by way more than $10 a week because of the increased underinvestment in public services caused by the Government’s tax cuts.
It just goes to show that for all the talk about fairness, the Government and the Opposition are completely out of step with the community. No wonder there is such hatred in the community towards politics and politicians.
Andrew Wilkie MP, Independent Member for Denison
