Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. Today we have seen a massive win for hardworking Australian families. They will be able to keep more of the money they earn. It's their money: they earned it, and we should take no more of it than the government needs to deliver the essential services Australians rely on.

Because of the stronger economy that we are seeing right now, we have stronger government revenues and we are enabled to give tax relief to all Australians. We're able to guarantee essential services and infrastructure, defence capability, and health and education, and the government can live within its means, coming back into balance a year earlier. Everything depends on that stronger economy and ensuring that Australians have the incentive to get ahead, to realise their dreams, to aspire and to realise their aspirations. That is what the enterprise of our nation is all about. That is what drives Australia.

And what has the Labor Party done? It has sought to block this change and voted against us. It regards any tax relief as a giveaway because it thinks that everything Australians earn belongs to the government. What our tax reform does is ensure that middle-income Australians—over four million of them—from this next financial year, starting on 1 July, will be receiving $530 back in a tax offset, and many middle-income families will be getting over a thousand dollars back. But then, over the full extent of the reform, we get to the point where 94 per cent of Australians will never pay more than 32½ cents in the dollar for every additional dollar they earn. The Labor Party talks about fairness and a progressive tax system. Well, in 2024-25, those in the top bracket, which by then will start at $200,000, will be paying a larger share of personal income tax receipts than they do today.

This is about aspiration. These are the values the coalition stands for—that the Liberal and National parties stand for: the values of aspiration. They used to be the values of the Labor Party, but they have been abandoned by a Labor Party that has walked out and given up on the men and women it was founded to represent. What an abandonment of aspiring Australians! What an abandonment of Australian workers! This has been a week of shame for the Labor Party, abandoning the people that it was founded to represent.

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