Senator CHRIS EVANS(3.30 p.m.) —I also wish to speak to the motion to take note of the answer to Senator Faulkner's question by Senator Hill about this whole question of the savings regime put in place by this budget. The most interesting aspect of this is that last year's budget was the one for the battlers. The rhetoric was always about the battlers. We heard that this was the new, reformed Liberal Party who really cared about people on low and middle incomes; that they had given up just looking after their rich mates and they had been transformed. So last year's budget was one for the battlers.

We do not hear that rhetoric this year because there is nothing to sustain it. This is the Liberal and National parties back to type, looking after their rich mates, looking after those who already have got it in society to make sure that they get a bit more. It is a classic reflection of their attitudes and traditional position.

The interesting situation is that the coalition is saying, `If working people save then they, too, can benefit.' But the reality of the savings pattern of working people is that they will not be able to save the sort of money that gives them any real benefit under the scheme. This scheme gives maximum benefit to those who can save $60,000 a year. I am on a very good income and I am lucky to save anything in a year. I do not know how people on $22,000, $30,000 or $40,000 a year are going to be saving the $60,000 that gets them the maximum benefit.

But the Prime Minister, John Howard, his ministers, the people earning $130,000 or $140,000 a year, will benefit because they are able to make superannuation payments and they are able to have investment properties and shares. They will be able to claim the full benefit. John Howard does not have the gumption to argue the fairness of this. When put under pressure, what did he say? He said, `I won't claim the benefit myself.' The point is that he cannot argue the fairness of it. He will not stand up and publicly argue the fairness of it, because he knows it is not fair, it is not right and it is not an appropriate measure at this time when so many Australians are doing it tough.

The irony of this is that, if you are a wage earner battling to bring up a couple of kids, you are getting means tested for your family allowance payments, for your child-care cash rebate and for sending your kids to university. But, if you are paying rent for the family home, the person to whom you are paying rent can claim that rent as a tax deduction under this scheme and get the $450 rebate. That is whom the government are assisting. They are not prepared to means test this but they will means test your ability to send your children to tertiary education; they will means test your ability to get assistance to put your kids in child care; they will means test your ability to get family assistance to help you bring up your kids—clothe and feed them and get their medical supplies; but they will not means test their mates who claim $450 a year cash rebate for their investments in shares, rent or superannuation.

I challenge anybody on the other side to defend the fairness of that. Liberal members of parliament harangued us over the child-care cash rebate, saying that it applied to the rich and why should the rich have their child care subsidised. Why should the rich have their superannuation and rent income subsidised? That is what is occurring under this proposal.

John Howard's performance on this matter yesterday really revealed that this whole proposition is indefensible. It is clearly about favouring those who are already doing well and not about protecting those who are doing it tough. John Stone, a former National Party senator, a conservative by any definition, described it in today's Financial Review as `silly to the point of irresponsibility'. Another critic in today's Financial Review was the superannuation partner from Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Mr John Randall, who said:

Not only is the rebate skewed towards higher-income earners, but it has been funded from money promised to help lower-income earners kick-start their retirement savings.

That is the key point. The government has taken the money that the Labor and the Liberal parties promised to put into superannuation for those people who were on average incomes, so that that they could retire in comfort, and redistributed it to the rich. They have taken an average of $100,000 out of people's retirement income by their failure to support the extension of the superannuation surcharge. An extension of the superannuation surcharge would have meant $100,000 extra, on average, for Australian workers retiring. The government has taken that money away and distributed it to their mates who earn income from shares, rent and superannuation. (Time expired)