Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

The short answer is: 'No.' Labor was all talk and no action. They said they would do this and would do that, and they did not. You know what they said they would do? They said that they would stop giving a tax subsidy to multinational companies earning more than $20 billion a year for research and development. They said they would scrap the tax subsidy that is currently in place—they never legislated it. And now that we are trying to do the hard work for them, they are opposed to it. That is the modern Labor Party: they try to walk on both sides of the road.

Some of the measures of that report on the tax front—when we came into government we said, 'Okay, how are they going to be implemented?' Treasury officials were very embarrassed. They said, 'Minister, these measures that Labor announced and banked revenue in the budget against are unimplementable.' In the end, we had to draw a line; we had to deal with all of the Labor spiders that we inherited. We had to fix all of the problems that we found when we got in, and we are working to repair your mess. (Time expired)