Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

Every day, the MPI comes around, and I get asked which frontbencher will I will flick it across to. I saw the one today, and I'd just refused to share. I refused to share, because of what the shadow Treasurer has put forward. Here are the words: the government's addiction to higher taxes and higher spending. His objection, if you look at what they've been standing for, is because they want taxes to be even higher and spending to be even higher. That is exactly what they have just spent and gone completely to the Australian people on. They managed, and the now shadow Treasurer managed, the most expensive election commitment to be taken to any election in the history of Federation. Even when he quibbles with the numbers and picks his preferred lower figure, it is still the most expensive election commitment that has ever been taken to a federal election.

They managed to be offering cuts. We know all the things they oppose. They oppose free TAFE, free medicines and urgent care clinics. They wanted to sack workers left, right and centre. We know all the things they oppose, and, even with their long list of cuts, they still managed to increase debt. They still managed to go to the election delivering increased debt. At the same time, and full credit for their honesty, they were the first opposition to actually go to an election promising that people should pay more income tax.

He went through a whole lot of different tax areas that he wanted to talk about in his speech there. He didn't say a word about income tax, did he? He did not say a word about income tax. Every single Australian taxpayer was being told that, if they were on this side of the House, income tax was going to be more, whereas the government's position was really simple: people should earn more and keep more of what they earn. Those opposite opposed both. They opposed people earning more, and they opposed people keeping more of what they earn.

Let's go through the economic stats. One of the most concerning things he just said is that Australia is becoming too reliant on other countries. That was one of his comments. He could only be referring to the fact that, under them, their concept of being less reliant on other countries was to shut down trade. So in country after country we were losing access to trade, which meant we were losing access to business, which meant we were losing Australian jobs. And yet they choose that as the better path. We are proud of the fact that there are more jobs in Australia because we've improved trade. We are proud of the fact that people have more job security because we've improved trade. We are proud of the fact that people are earning more and have more job security.

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