Heaven help us if Tim “Freedom Boy” Wilson ever manages to move on from being the Member for Goldstein in Melbourne, to becoming a minister (actual or shadow) in an economics related portfolio.

Going on his performance on Q&A last night, on the question of corporate tax cuts for banks, he has a selective memory and doesn’t know what he is talking about. Some would say that qualifies him for being Treasurer, just like his mate Scott Morrison.

An audience member last night asked, “why should Australians further subsidise the big banks and other big businesses through billions in tax cuts?”

Our Tim said tax cuts were not subsidies and that banks would not be be getting any special treatment through the corporate tax cuts. “The reality is that tax applies to everybody equally,” Wilson said. “You have a company tax structure that covers all companies. It doesn’t discriminate.”

Asked why it was not possible to frame legislation so that tax cuts weren’t applied to the banks, Wilson said the government “could technically do that”. “But would we apply different rates of tax on individuals based on whether we or what they’ve done in the past? It’s not an appropriate way to design tax.”

But that is what Tim’s leaders, Prime Minster Turnbull and Treasurer Scott Morrison were arguing a year ago tonight (and no doubt our Timbo did as well) when the government announced the $6.2 billion bank levy (over four years) to apply to the big four banks (Westpac, Commonwealth, ANZ, NAB) and Macquarie Group.

So last year it was OK to levy a different rate of tax on the five banks, but this year it’s not right to do that to withhold tax cuts? If it is OK to levy a differentiated tax rate to raise money, why isn’t it OK to do that to withhold it?

And to their discredit, no one else on last night’s panel picked up Timbo on that bit of hypocrisy — not opposition front-bencher Linda Burney, not host Tony Jones, and not Get Up co-founder, Jeremy Heimans. And nor did anyone in the audience. How quickly they all forget.