Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Petrie for his question and his keen interest in jobs and growth. The budget I will bring down tonight, on behalf of Turnbull government, will not be a typical budget. This is not a typical time. This is a time when the government needs a strong economic plan for Australia's future. This will be a plan that will stick to our plan for jobs and growth by backing in. Australians are out there making this transition and making our economy work every single day. It is a budget that will fix specific problems in our tax system to sustainably meet our commitments for future generations. It is a budget that will ensure the government lives within its means. Australians, Australian businesses and Australian households are living within their means, and they know that the government must live within its means. That is what the budget I will bring down tomorrow night will do, because when you do that you are in a position to bring the budget back to balance and address the long-term issues of debt.

This budget will contain affordable commitments, with real money that is actually there, not the sort of commitments we saw from those opposite. They were spending money from mining taxes that never came in. They were spending money that was never there, letting down Australian families and letting down people relying on those commitments, because those opposite made commitments with money that was not there. And that is the problem of the economic management approach of those opposite. What we on this side will do is live within our means and have affordable commitments—like the $2.9 billion we have announced and committed to for our hospitals and the $2 billion that we announced yesterday for education. This is real money that is focused on getting real results and outcomes. That is what a budget needs to do. It needs to make commitments when the money is actually there and you can actually afford, and deliver on, those commitments.

So, in this budget, innovation and science will continue to prosper under this government—a defence plan for local high-tech manufacturing and technology; export trade deals to generate new business opportunities; incentives for small business to go out there and work hard, as they always do, and they are the hope of the side; a sustainable budget crackdown on tax avoidance and ensuring that the funding commitments that we make can be paid for. They will be paid for by saving, not by tax increases like we have seen from those opposite, who want to put a $100 billion tax burden in addition on the Australian economy. That is not a plan for jobs and growth. What I will deliver is a plan for jobs and growth.

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