Mr HAMILTON (Groom) (16:05): There’s so much to cover here today. Goodness me, where do I start? In times past, it took wars to unify the House. Nowadays, Elton John does the job just fine in the way he has brought us together. I’m going to blame the member for Moreton for this. I hope his song isn’t Goodbye Yellow Brick Road as rumours would persist, but I’m glad he started us off. For my contribution to the Elton John analogies I’ll go with Sacrifice, because the Prime Minister chose to sacrifice his integrity when he reversed his position on the stage 3 tax cuts. Speaker, I’ll leave it to your good discretion who had the best Elton John song.
I am going to mix it up though and move musical direction to that well-known economist Sir Mix-a-Lot, because I like tax cuts and I cannot lie. It’s been a wonderful question that we’ve had so many times on our position on these stage 3 tax cuts. Where are we? Where are we going to end up? It’s where we’ve always been—voting for lower taxes. That’s what we’ve always done. That is the Liberal Party legacy, from the days of Menzies and right the way through. This is exactly what we do. Quite frankly, when it comes to tax cuts, Labor has all the legitimacy of a 13-year-old kid walking around in an Elton John shirt. That’s not what you grew up with. That’s not what moves you. That’s not who you are. That’s not part of your structure and your DNA. It’s cool; tax cuts are cool when you’re coming towards a by-election in Dunkley when everybody is hurting. It’s very cool to get on board then, but it’s not who you’ve been. This is not what’s in your DNA. This is who we are. It’s our legacy to the Australian people. It’s what we’re called upon to do every time we come in, and it’s what the Australian people trust us to do. The great part is that I genuinely hope we are still talking about tax cuts at the next election. I really hope we do, because I know who the Australian people trust when it comes to tax cuts. It’s the people who have delivered them time and time again.
It’s wonderful to hear what the benefits of the new stage 3 tax cuts will be for people, and every time they say, ‘And they were going to get nothing from those opposite.’ That’s except, of course, for stage 1 and stage 2—except for those two little things the Romans did for us. They don’t talk about what’s happened. We’re at stage 3. The clue’s in the number ‘three’. That’s where you go back from. So what happened in stage 1 and stage 2? The same people, who it’s often pointed out are going to benefit by $800, benefited by $6,000 under stages 1 and 2. Then there’s the wonderful story of the LMITO, which was a decision by this side to step in and address cost-of-living concerns for low- and medium-income tax earners. That’s a step that we took. We took another one which was $420 for the cost-of-living tax offset—another step we took for taxpayers. Do you know why? It was because we understand that when times are tight, the best thing we can do—we’ve heard Labor trying to take this line now—is to let people keep more of what they earn. That’s what we do. That’s have we have always done. That is our legacy and what we have done time and time again.
When John Howard was in government, he delivered tax relief in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007. Fascinatingly, when Kevin Rudd came to be Prime Minister, he was smart enough to keep all of those changes that we had from 2007. There we go—Kevin Rudd, one; Mr Albanese, unfortunately, zero on that front. I’ll speak to another one. When times changed—and the government speakers talk about this—a review of their position on tax policy came about. That has happened before. It happened with the GST. In 1993 Mr Howard was against the GST. He went to the election in 1996 and changed his mind. The circumstances changed, and he changed his position. What did he do? He went to an election. He took that commitment to an election and sought a mandate from the Australian people so that he could continue to look them in the eye.
Mr Jones: Careful what you wish for!
Mr HAMILTON: Absolutely! I wish for another golden age of Howard-era government, and so do the Australian people right now. If you ask the Australian people what they would like more of, Whitlam-era politics or Howard-era stability, strength and growth of real wages. Between 1996 and 2007, real wages growth was 21.5 per cent. Under Howard, real wages growth was 21.5 per cent. Government members are doing a terrible job on their key commitment.
Mr Jones: You know there have been four Liberal governments since then?
Mr HAMILTON: Fantastic! Good night.
