David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about this Treasury Laws Amendment (Cost of Living Tax Cuts) Bill 2024 and a related bill, addressing the cost-of-living tax cuts. There are very mixed feelings about this. It's like the old chestnut with the two nuts under three half shells. There's a lot of moving around here, and I think the government benches are hoping that no-one has realised.

If you recall, this is more like giving back some of the tax offsets that you removed at the last budget, rather than a tax cut. The actual tax rate has been reduced from 19 per cent down to 16 per cent in the $18,200 to $45,000 bracket. The flat $45,000 to $200,000 threshold that was to be taxed at 30c in the dollar has been abandoned, and that bracket has been split in two. The 30c rate will only go from $45,000 to $135,000, and then from $135,000 to 190,000 the 37 per cent tax bracket still applies. In our original tax plan stage 3, that whole 37c-in-the-dollar tax rate was going to be abolished until a person's income went up above $200,000.

One of the other features in our last budget was the low and middle income tax offset, which had been there for three years at $1,052 for earnings up to $37,000. It was significantly greater than what these tax cuts are now. Obviously, when we lost the election—and because we didn't announce that that was being increased from $1,052 up to $1,500 for people earning up to $90,000—we lost government, so of course we couldn't introduce that increase. But those opposite had the opportunity to help people at the last budget and continue that low and middle income tax offset. People have been worse off for a year. Lots of people came to my office when they did their tax returns and all of a sudden they weren't getting the refund that they had gotten for the two years before that.

These Dunkley tax cuts are not really as good as they were made out to be. No-one is ever going to object to a tax cut. I like lower taxes, like everyone. But you were getting a better deal out of the coalition's tax plan. There are people who, when this comes through, will be stuck on the 37c in the dollar rate. We had a holistic plan rolled out over several years so that the issue of bracket creep was addressed, so that people who are working hard, wanting to do overtime or getting promoted, would—

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