Bill Shorten: Labor 'not for turning' on negative gearing and dividend changes

Extract from The Guardian

Australia news

The opposition leader also urges Coalition not to back away from overhaul of banking industry after royal commission

Katharine Murphy Political editor

@murpharoo

Sun 3 Feb 2019 12.12 AEDT Last modified on Sun 3 Feb 2019 12.14 AEDT

 Bill Shorten and Scott Morrison at the Chinese New Year opening ceremony in Box Hill, Melbourne on Saturday. Photograph: Ellen Smith/AAP

Bill Shorten has warned the Morrison government not to “backpedal” on holding the banks to account, and has declared the opposition is “not for turning” on its controversial reforms to negative gearing and dividend imputation.
Shorten told the ABC on Sunday there were signs the Coalition would back away from implementing systemic reforms to the banking industry expected to be proposed in the final report of the royal commission into financial services, which will be released on Monday.
Referencing recent comments from the government about the imperative of avoiding a credit crunch, Shorten said Sunday: “The reality is this is a government that can always find a way to not bring the banks to heel”.

The Labor leader also declared the opposition would persist with contentious reforms to negative gearing, capital gains tax concessions and to existing the system of cash rebates for franking credits despite signs of a voter backlash, and an intensifying scare campaign from the Coalition.
Shorten said voters were ready for a government prepared to take tough decisions. “We’re not for turning. To put it directly – do people want a government or do they want a piece of plasticine?”
“Do people want a government with tax principles and fairness at their core or do they just want a lump of political putty?”
“We have had six years of a plasticine government and we are putting our views out because we want Australia to be fairer and we want to operate in the interests of the millions of people who go to work every day [and] pensioners”.
The Morrison government is scheduled to release the final report of the banking royal commission on Monday afternoon, and is expected to outline its preliminary response to wide-ranging recommendations on regulation of the financial services sector, executive pay and bonuses.
Last week, the prime minister said the government response to the Hayne recommendations needed to ensure that credit kept flowing. “I’m very keen to ensure that the banks keep lending and the other lenders keep lending”.
“This is the lubricant for the Australian economy,” Morrison said. “When banks aren’t lending money, you can’t build houses, you can’t grow businesses, you can’t see your export economies grow – Australians miss out and Australians pay the price”.

Morrison has emphasised the importance of getting the balance right, and has thus far stopped short of committing the government to supporting all of the recommendations.
“In principle, we’re keen to support all of the recommendations but having not as yet seen them, we obviously can’t responsibly make a comment on that”.
Shorten was asked on Sunday whether he would commit to implementing all of what commissioner Hayne recommended. The Labor leader said you would need “a pretty amazing reason” not to do what the royal commission recommended.
Front running the release of the report, Labor has promised enhanced whistleblower protections for people who report improper conduct.
Shorten said given whistleblowers paid a substantial price for coming forward to expose wrong-doing, there needed to be incentives to ensure that corruption was brought to light.
In his interim report, commissioner Hayne said corporate greed was at the root of conduct that had disadvantaged bank customers. “Too often, the answer seems to be greed – the pursuit of short-term profit at the expense of basic standards of honesty,” he said.
On the tax policies, Shorten said action was needed to bring the budget back to structural surplus because expenditure on concessions like cash rebates to retirees who hadn’t paid income tax was taking fiscal firepower away from social services.

“It is not fair that we’re paying $100m a week paying non-taxpayers cash tax refunds, and it is not fair in this country that we spend more money giving non-taxpayers a tax refund than we are on public schools,” Shorten said.