Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's been quite an extraordinary week, and I can't really get past why the opposition is so angry. What we've got is a prime minister who said—on the stage 3 tax cuts that were legislated by those opposite, which disproportionately favoured people earning over $180,000—that, because of the economic circumstances and because of the pressure that low- and middle-income earners were under, we should now share that with them. What the Prime Minister has done, and what our government has done, is, rather than all of us getting a massive tax cut, share that with the people who care for our children, the people who clean this parliament, the people who cut our hair and the people who sell us our groceries at the supermarket. They are outraged because the Prime Minister has done the right thing for low- and middle-income earners.

Do they not understand that everybody else out there who are low- and middle-income earners—who are the people cleaning our homes, who are cleaning this parliament, who are doing the lawns, who are making sure that our children are cared for and who are making sure that our mothers and grandmothers are cared for in aged care—are going: 'So he's decided to share the tax cut with all of us? He's a pretty good bloke for doing that.' That's what you're doing each and every time that you say it's a broken promise. You're reminding all of those low- and middle-income earners that the Prime Minister had the courage to do what was right because the economic circumstances have changed. That is what this government does. We evolve with the times and go, 'What needs to change?', unlike a previous opposition leader who became Prime Minister.

Let's just remember what Tony Abbott did. He stood up on the eve of the 2013 election and said there would be no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no cuts to the ABC and the SBS, no changes to the pension. That is what he said. And what did he do the moment he became Prime Minister, in his first budget? He slashed education funding. Our public schools have fallen so far behind we now have an education minister working to fix the funding gap in our public schools. We have a health system we are trying to resurrect and rebuild. The previous government cut many billions of dollars from our healthcare system and then tried to impose a GP tax on people who were turning up at public hospitals. This was from a government who said in opposition there would be no cuts to health. Let's not even talk about the cuts to the SBS and the ABC, so much so that the SBS said it was a direct correlation to their funding cuts that they had to introduce paid advertising. Then there were the broken promises on pensions and the cuts that they had to pensions. It is this government, when coming to office, who said, 'We have to turn this around.'

Maybe it is just a bit of self-interest for those opposite because they were banking on that big tax cut that they and their mates were going to get. We are asking them to think of everybody else. Think of all the people in all your communities—rural, regional, women—who will benefit from these changes. This is good tax policy. It is restoring integrity to our tax system. It is dealing with bracket creep. The opposition's version of dealing with bracket creep is to abolish the brackets. That is not dealing with bracket creep; that is abolishing brackets and flattening our tax system. That is not good tax policy. That would see all the benefit going to those at the top end of town and not flowing through.

Our tax reform is making sure that every Australian taxpayer gets a tax cut. Those opposite will still get a very generous tax cut. But we are now saying you need to share that tax cut with your own staff, with your own people in your community, with the person who is serving the food, working at the petrol station, caring for your kids, caring for your parents. Be fair, do the right thing. This is what a responsible government would do.

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