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

That deals with step one: getting the budget back into balance by getting expenditure under control, keeping taxes under control and ensuring we are growing the economy to bring the budget back to surplus. But now the job begins of paying off Labor's debt. That job was done by the Howard and Costello government and it will be done by my government, in the same way it was done by the Howard and Costello government, by maintaining a strong economy, keeping spending under control, keeping taxes under control and ensuring that we continue to give the incentive to Australians to go out there and work hard, start businesses and make investments.

The second plank of what the Treasurer announced last night was to continue to build a strong economy. You don't do that with higher taxes and you do not do that with reckless carbon emissions targets. What you do is you lower taxes for Australians, and you do it for all Australians. Under our government, there is a point in working hard in this country and there is a point in having a great business and working hard in that business and investing in your future. Under a Labor government, there would be no point in working hard, because, the harder you work, the more they punish you. What you see in Labor's tax plan is that they have to punish some to pretend they want to help others. All they will do is put a dampener on the Australian economy and hold the economy back.

We are investing $100 million in the infrastructure the Australian economy needs and Australians living all around the country need to get about safer—to get home sooner and safer; to get on site and get out of the traffic. That is what our plan on infrastructure is doing. We are investing more than half a billion in the skills of all Australians—from those coming out of school to those changing jobs in their late fifties or even their sixties. That is the skills plan we are investing in, with 80,000 additional apprentices funded by this government.

All of this guarantees the essential services that Australians rely on, with increases of over 60 per cent already under this government since we were elected for public schools and hospitals, and a 27 per cent increase in funding for Medicare, with the highest Medicare bulkbilling on record delivered by the strong economy and the strong budget management of a great Liberal-National government.

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