Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Boothby for her question. I can inform her and the House that nearly 70,000 taxpayers in her electorate will benefit from the passage of our tax bill through this parliament. Around 30,000 of those will get the full $1,080. On 2 April in this place, we brought down this year's budget. The budget is back in the black and back on track. It's a budget with a record $100 billion of spending on infrastructure and record spending on schools and hospitals. As members on this side of the House will remember, we have done all of that without increasing taxes.

Central to the budget was $158 billion of tax cuts focusing on short-term relief and long-term structural reform, which will see around 94 per cent of Australian taxpayers pay a marginal rate of no more than 30c in the dollar. Our tax package of $158 billion of tax relief builds on the $144 billion of tax cuts that we already legislated from last year's budget. That's around $300 billion of taxpayers' money that is back in their pockets where it belongs.

Our budget and our tax cuts are based on the values and principles that the Nationals and Liberals sign up to: reward for effort, encouraging aspiration and enabling Australians to earn more and keep more of what they earn. We are doing all we can to reduce taxes, against the will of those opposite, because those opposite are ignoring the will of the Australian people. They are ignoring the message that was sent loud and clear at the most recent election. We on this side of the house, all 77 members, got the message, but only two members opposite got the message that the Australian people want tax cuts: the rent-a-quote, the member for Hunter over there; and the aspirational frontbencher, the member for Wills. They got the message from the Australian people. As long as the member for Rankin, who was so proud and pleased, in his own words, of the retirees tax and the housing tax, and who thought it was courageous to have $387 billion of higher taxes put to the Australian people, is in charge of their tax policy, the coalition will always be on the side of Australian workers and lower taxes.

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