Dr JENSEN (2:22 PM) —My question is addressed to the Treasurer. Would the Treasurer advise the House why business must have immediate certainty on tax cuts to properly pay employees after 1 July? What is the impediment to this action?

Mr COSTELLO (Treasurer) —I thank the honourable member for his question. It is of no small importance to business as to what they do with their payrolls on 1 July. One side of Australian politics wants Australians to have a tax cut on 1 July and the other side of Australian politics, the Australian Labor Party, opposes tax cuts on 1 July. The instruments that can put this into effect have now been tabled in this House and the Labor Party did nothing to disallow them last Thursday and has done nothing to disallow them on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of this week. This is no small matter.

Here is the set of schedules that employers have to put in place on 1 July if the Australian Labor Party does not disallow them. It consists of 22 separate schedules with weekly, fortnightly and monthly pay withholding amounts. It shows those amounts with and without leave loading and for those paying the Medicare levy and those not; it has special tables for employees with HECS debts under the Student Financial Supplement Scheme; it has particular tables for particular industries such as actors, variety artists and other entertainers; and it has tables for age pensioners and low-income persons. If the Australian Labor Party will give an assurance that it will not disallow this schedule in the Senate, that is what employers have to be ready to apply on 1 July.

If they do not give that assurance, this second set of schedules, which has also been prepared by the Australian Taxation Office, will be the one that will apply. That too has 22 different schedules: with or without dependants; with HECS debts, without HECS debts; with Medicare, without Medicare; for senior Australians and without them. There they are.

MYOB, which prepares these schedules in a software system, says that it needs to know—the cut-off date is 6 June—whether you load that one on your computer or you load that one on your computer. If the Australian Labor Party cannot decide by 6 June MYOB will load that one with a manual override and password for that one depending on what the outcome will be. And these have to be applied to each and every employee.

The Leader of the Opposition was asked about this on Lateline last night. He was asked whether he had made up his mind yet whether he will be voting to disallow these schedules. Alas, notwithstanding that the budget came down on 12 May, he is yet to make up his mind. He is still determined not to be determined in relation to this matter. He had the hide to say on the Lateline program last night, ‘Oh, well, we disagree with MYOB. Employers don’t need from 6 June to load this into their computers and get ready.’ As if the Leader of the Opposition has ever met a payroll in his life!

Mr Beazley —As if you have!

Mr COSTELLO —As if I have! When I was employing people you used to go down to the Australia Post Office and buy the tax stamps and lick them and put them on the back. And anyone who has employed anybody, including me, knows what it is like and they know that you need certainty. In relation to MYOB the Leader of the Opposition said last night, ‘Oh, well, they’ve got plenty of time to do all of this.’  He was not always so dismissive of MYOB. When he was trying to pretend that he knew something about small business he went to the Small Business Summit in Sydney on 17 May. He tried to show that he knew something about small business. He said:

this is the Leader of the Opposition—

Never was a truer word spoken but when they sit down with MYOB print-outs from now on he will have given them that set and that set. Why? Because he cannot make up his mind. He cannot make a decision. He cannot show any leadership and behind him sits a backbench who are following him down this track to this folly. I say to each and every one of them: get out of the way of small business; let people have their tax cuts; no more of these stunts; show some understanding of what small business in this country wants.