The first parliamentary question time of the year was not one to watch on an empty stomach.
The House of Representatives has hosted debates about many hefty issues over the years: how to tackle climate change, address Indigenous disadvantage or fund the nation’s schools. Tuesday’s main topic was far more prosaic: should taxpayers foot the bill for subsidised business lunches?
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton in the first question time of the year.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
For those who were sunning themselves on a beach at the time and missed it, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton kicked off the election year with a promise to allow tax deductions of up to $20,000 for meal and entertainment expenses for companies with a turnover of less than $10 million.
Unsurprisingly, the hospitality sector was cock-a-hoop. But the pledge immediately invited a smorgasbord of questions. How much would the policy cost? (The opposition wouldn’t really say.) How would you stop it being rorted? And was this really the best use of taxpayer money?
Displaying the political adroitness that hasn’t always typified this government, Treasurer Jim Chalmers had his departmental boffins cost the policy and released the sums to the media on the eve of parliament’s return.
The result: a cost to the budget of at least $1.6 billion and as much as $10 billion if business owners proved especially gluttonous.
And so the treasurer showed up to question time looking like the cat that swallowed the King Island double cream – or, more to the point, like the small business owner who devoured the taxpayer-subsidised chicken parma.
“Now, this is the only kind of policy that could have been agreed at the tail-end of a very long lunch, Mr Speaker,” Chalmers said to hearty chuckles from his colleagues.
If you squinted you could see him licking his lips, like his political hero Paul Keating when he vowed to do Liberal leader John Hewson slowly. It was the Coalition on the defensive over policy, rather than the government.
“You can imagine them sitting around with the blue teeth and the soy sauce on the tie coming up with the big ideas,” Chalmers taunted. “They have refused to come clean on the cost of their long-lunch policy.”
One rowdy Labor backbencher shouted: “Does it include free Ozempic as well?”
Education Minister Jason Clare used a Dorothy Dixer about cutting student debt to attack the policy, saying of the $1.6 billion estimate: “That’s a lot of steak tartare, that’s a lot of lobster.”
Displaying a flash of class warfare reminiscent of Bill Shorten’s attacks on the top end of town during his time as opposition leader, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke accused Dutton of wanting to spend “billions of dollars on long lunches for the boss” when ordinary workers were starving for a pay rise.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was similarly convinced the Coalition had served up a stinker, telling reporters it was “the worst, sloppiest policy put forward by any opposition that I’ve seen in my entire time since I’ve been in parliament”.
As they heckled their opponents across the dispatch box, Labor MPs looked more energised than they had for a long time. Those with a hunger to see the great political issues of our time being debated, meanwhile, were left unfulfilled.
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