Govt accused of class warfare on tax bill

LABOR has accused the government of waging class warfare as it begins its defence of its mining tax.

Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen said the bill to repeal the controversial tax told Australians a lot about the government's priorities and values.

Mr Bowen said the Minerals Resource Rent Tax (MRRT) Repeal Bill could equally be called the School Kids Bonus repeal bill or the low income superannuation contribution bill - two of several other measures within the legislation.

He said the MRRT was the centrepiece of the bill.

The coalition had originally said the tax would be a "dagger at the heart" of the mining industry and would stop projects going ahead.

Now the government couldn't name a project that had been stopped and was saying the tax didn't raise enough money.

Mr Bowen said Labor believed that the profits from minerals that belonged to the Australian people should be taxed.

Turning to the move to repeal the low income super contribution scheme, Mr Bowen said it was unfair that one in three workers would now get no assistance through the tax system.

Worse, the help they now get would be taken away retrospectively.

Imagine the furore if the government tried to take away the assistance that the wealthy received, he said.

The government was giving tax breaks to people with more than $2 million in their super funds.

"Good luck to them," he said.

They should get a tax break, but not the extra generous one the Abbott government was giving.

"This is class warfare from this government," he said.

The debate on the MRRT Repeal and Other Measures Bill 2013 began after the government used its numbers to limit the debate. It's due to finish on Wednesday evening.

Liberal MP Craig Kelly lambasted Labor for making promises it couldn't keep, comparing the MRRT scheme of funding to the plot of a 1980s American comedy, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

"The plot in that movie features dysfunctional Clark W Griswold (who) ... thinks he's going to get this great big bonus at Christmas time, so he goes out and he promises his family all the wonderful things he's going to do," Mr Kelly told parliament.

But the Christmas bonus doesn't arrive and the household falls into "complete disarray and dysfunction".

"This is exactly the same situation we have here ... (Labor) making all these wonderful promises to the electorate ... based on a tax that simply does not raise the revenue to pay for it."

Mr Kelly said Labor locked in $18.4 billion worth of expenditure for the budget forward estimates, but the MRRT netted only $400 million in its initial period.

"We have to stop this. We have to turn the ship around and that's why not only must we repeal this flawed mining tax ... (but) all the spending that goes with it also has to be repealed."

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