Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The budget was an opportunity for the government to lay out how it is dealing with the great strengths it inherited in the economy and in the budget and with the great challenges that we face as a nation. But instead, after only a few short days, it sank without a trace. That is because all we got in this budget was gloom, doom, forecasting and commentary. What we didn't get was a plan. The Treasurer said before the budget he was going to paint a picture, and I was looking forward to perhaps an oil painting or a water colour, but we know that all we got was a self-portrait, because in the lead-up to the Budget we saw puff piece after puff piece, not about the budget but about the Treasurer. The Treasurer was more obsessed with himself than he was with the great people of this great nation who wanted to see a plan. They wanted to see a plan.

The test for this budget was simple. It was to deliver a comprehensive plan that builds on the great strengths that have been inherited and deals with the challenges that we face: to put downward pressure on inflation and interest rates without increasing taxes, to relieve the supply side pressures we see in the economy by increasing participation rates and productivity, and to deliver on the key promises that Labor made in their election campaign—unambiguous promises. In the shorter term, Australians do want to see lower interest rate. They do want to see lower inflation. In the longer term, they want to be in a position where they're empowered, where their aspirations can be realised, where they know they're going to have a lower tax environment, an environment where if they put in effort, if they make investments and if they take risks, they're going to be rewarded for it but they saw none of that. They saw absolutely none of that. All they saw was a missed opportunity.

Instead of delivering a comprehensive plan to deal with interest rates and inflation, we know now that what we've seen is a plan, or a lack of a plan, which will leave the Reserve Bank doing all the work to deal with the interest rates and inflation that we are seeing with such strength. Instead of delivering economic growth and ensuring that spending is less than economic growth, we've seen $115 billion of extra spending in this budget. A Reserve Bank that wants to be able to take the pressure off Australian families, to not raise interest rates as much as it otherwise would have, doesn't want to see an extra $115 billion of spending but that's exactly what it saw in this budget.

When it comes to broken promises, the list is long. I only have seven minutes left, so I have to focus on a short list of broken promises because there are many. There is the $275 reduction in power prices. The Treasurer misheard the question on this but the truth is it is gone. That promise is absolutely gone, replaced with a 56 per cent increase in the next two years. They promised no change in franking credits. Gone. There's $550 million of additional taxes on franking credits. I remember 2019 well. Maybe the Treasurer was mishearing during the 2019 election campaign. The Australian people said very clearly in 2019 that they don't want to see more tax on franking credits.

They promised, prior to the election, an improvement and increase in real wages. In fact, what we saw in the budget, in black and white, was no increase in real wages in this term of government. We saw—we heard it today—in their campaign launch, a few weeks before the election, a promise of cheaper mortgages. There are no asterisks or footnotes in that one. I went through and checked very carefully. It's gone! Cheaper mortgages? They've given up the ghost and put up the white flag.

This is what we've seen of this budget. More than anything else, it's Labor putting up the white flag to the challenges Australians are facing, with a whole series of broken promises. It's not surprising that some gave the Treasurer the label 'Snake Chalmers' soon after the budget was handed down.

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