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

The government's budget contains almost $10 billion of infrastructure in this financial year. That's moneys that are hitting right across the country. In addition to that, the tax cuts that were legislated by this government, fought against by the Labor Party, who said these shouldn't happen—in fact, the Labor Party argued at the election that we should be imposing $387 billion of higher taxes on the Australian economy. I don't know what sort of a stimulus package $387 billion of higher taxes constitutes, but that was the prescription that was offered by the shadow Treasurer when he was the shadow finance minister and he was the joint architect with the former shadow Treasurer and the former Leader of the Opposition, who said they thought at this time of great uncertainty in the global economy that adding $387 billion to the tax burden of Australians would be a good idea.

We don't share that view. We believe, and we have demonstrated in our budget, that the right way to go about addressing the issues in the global economy and, indeed, in the domestic economy is the stable and considered approach of rolling out our program of reducing the costs of doing business, whether it's on removing unnecessary regulation, ensuring that we're training people for the skills needs of the future, delivering tax relief to Australians, taking our trade barriers further out to ensure that we're dealing with more and more countries in the world and taking our trade agreements coverage from 26 per cent to 70 per cent, and we're seeking to go further. So that is the economic plan that we took to the election.

The Labor Party would have us engage in the reckless spending policies that they last implemented when the member who asked the question sat at the knee of Wayne Swan and instituted one of the most reckless spending packages, which crashed the budget and took money away from things like pharmaceuticals, defence spending and a whole range of other important priorities because the Labor Party did not know how to manage money. He refers to the Governor of the Reserve Bank, and I'm happy to quote the governor when he said, on 1 October:

the Australian economy appears to have reached a gentle turning point. The economy has been through a soft patch recently, but we are expecting a return to around trend growth over the next year. There are a number of factors that are supporting this outlook. These include the low level of interest rates, the recent tax cuts, ongoing spending on infrastructure, signs of stabilisation in some established housing markets—

So I would encourage members to reflect on those comments. (Time expired)

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