Senator GIBSON (3:17 PM) —The Labor Party are against tax reform. That is the fact of the matter. In the last election, the Labor Party campaigned against tax reform. They said that the current system in Australia is fair and reasonable. That is what they said. That is what they told the Australian community. We said to the Australian community that we recognise, as everyone in the Australian community recognises, that the tax system in Australia is definitely broken. Everyone in Australia knows this. They know that the wholesale sales tax system is a mess.

Senator Conroy —Rubbish!

Senator GIBSON —It is rubbish, is it? There is no wholesale sales tax on a Lear jet, but ordinary folk pay wholesale sales tax at 22 per cent on motor cars. What is fair about that? It is well known that the wholesale sales tax system is a mess. We want to get rid of FIDs and BADs. The Labor Party wants to keep them. They are a disincentive to jobs in the finance industry in Australia. The Labor Party wants to keep stamp duties on financial transactions; we are planning to get rid of them as part of our overall package. They want to keep them as an imposition on businesses.

Worse than that, without the total tax reform package, how can we get rid of the problem of the disincentive for people on low incomes to work, to do extra work and to save? Through our tax reform package, we are reducing the marginal tax rates for the great bulk of Australian wage and salary earners—that is those with an annual income of between $20,000 and $50,000; and average earnings in Australia are about $38,000 a year—and to reduce their marginal tax rates to 30 per cent so they have a real incentive to work and to save.

In addition to that, we are reducing the taper rates for various government payments—pensions, et cetera—to make sure that people who are poor and are in receipt of government benefits get away from the marginal tax rates of over 100 per cent that they are currently paying. It is no wonder that some people do not want to work and do not want to save.

We published a 200-page document on our plan for tax reform before we went to the Australian people. The people voted for us to stay in government. They want tax reform because they recognise that the tax reform package will provide a fairer system for everybody. It will provide an incentive for people to work and to save—which is what we want, particularly for younger people—and it will also provide stronger economic growth for everybody.

Independent experts have predicted that the positive economic growth resulting from the tax package will range from one per cent to three per cent. These are not Treasury figures; this is what outside experts have predicted. As a consequence of that, there will be higher incomes for everyone and an increase in the number of jobs. The minimum estimate of increased job numbers is of the order of 200,000 simply from the implementation of the tax reform package in the next four or five years. The reforms are very important for Australia. All Australians understand that the reforms are important. Yet today the Labor Party is nitpicking about minute details, even before the legislation has been tabled—and this legislation will be tabled in the near future.

We have set out the strategy of what needs to be done in adequate detail in the 200-page document—more than anyone else has ever done before. What detail did you put out in 1993 when you increased the total tax take of the Commonwealth government by 30 per cent? You did not pay compensation to people who were worse off. This is a great package for the Australian people. The Australian people recognised that and voted for us to go ahead with it. (Time expired)