Page 1228 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 6 April 2016
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MR BARR: Oh, you won’t? So you now support our tax reform, do you? You now support it, do you? Having opposed it all the way—
Mr Hanson: Who said that? Who said that? We have not said so.
MR BARR: Oh, you do not have a position? There we are. So there it is. Firstly, it is “We are opposed to it.” Now we are at the point where “We do not actually have a position.”
Mr Hanson: You are making it up.
MR BARR: What are you going to do, Mr Hanson?
Mr Hanson: You are making it up.
MR BARR: Are you going to put those stamp duties back up? Are you putting the tax back on insurance? Is that what you are doing? Is that your position? That is certainly Mr Smyth’s position. That is what he has been narking about for five years—that this tax reform is bad. He supports, and you support, whacking thousands of dollars of stamp duties back on home purchases in this city. You want to get to a position where you can put a tax on insurance back on. You want everyone paying 10 per cent and more on their insurance products, their home contents, their motor vehicle, their business insurances. You want to put taxes up on all of those people. You are going to put payroll tax back up, because part of the government’s tax reforms has also involved significant payroll tax cuts for small and medium-sized enterprises. You want to unwind all of that.
You have been campaigning against it from the start. You do not believe in it. You do not understand it. You do not take the advice of your own Prime Minister. You do not take the advice of anyone who has studied this. Every single economist, every single report on the efficiency of tax, clearly states that the reforms being undertaken here in the ACT are the right public policy direction.
Your own Prime Minister, your own federal leader, in his first major political interview of the year, went on the Insiders program and praised the ACT for our tax reforms and praised my government for its political courage.
At COAG, there was the federal Treasurer and the Prime Minister. What do they have to say about your position—the hopelessness of the Canberra Liberals’ position on tax? It is pretty entertaining, I have got to say, from my perspective to be told by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer at the federal level, the federal Liberal Prime Minister and the federal Liberal Treasurer, that states and territories need to reform their taxes and do exactly what we are doing. I say, “Yes, Prime Minister. Yes, Treasurer. Yes, we are indeed undertaking these reforms. But, guess what? Guess who opposes it? Your own colleagues.” He shakes his head and he goes, “Well, they are not really up to government.” And that is exactly right. They are not. They are not up to government. That is very clear. Both the Prime Minister and the Treasurer have been—
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