Kerry Bartlett (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. Minister, what benefits are being provided by the recent budget to promote the financial wellbeing of Australian families? Are these gains under threat?

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Macquarie for his question. He is a man who is totally committed to families and family values and has been for over 11 years in this place. The budget delivered a real bonanza for Australian families in the form of the childcare tax rebate being brought forward; the childcare benefit being increased; and tax cuts for every Australian, as real money in people’s pockets. It is a real bonanza for Australian families. We will be able to say, as a result of this budget, that the family tax benefit, which was standing at $14 billion in 1996-97 when the Howard-Costello government was elected, is today $28 billion of direct assistance to Australian families. That actually equates to $8,300 for the average family. Then on top of that the average family gets another $2,000 in assistance with the childcare benefit. That is about $10,000 of direct assistance to help the families of Macquarie and the families in all of the electorates around this great country.

The only threat to these great circumstances that Australian families now find themselves in—of having their childcare fees going down, their tax going down and jobs going up—is the election of a Labor government. I say that because there is only one tax policy of the Labor Party currently available, and that is the one they took to the last election—the one for which the member for Lilley was the architect. His name is there on the bottom, as shown by the Treasurer. The man who would be the Treasurer of this country had a policy, which is still existing Labor policy because there is nothing to replace it, that had families in Australia on $10,000, $20,000, $25,000, $30,000, $35,000, $75,000, $80,000, $85,000, $90,000 and $100,000—on each of those tax scales—worse off under a Labor tax policy. That was when the Australian government was in surplus. This was not back when a Labor government was in and they were trying to find the pennies; this was when a coalition had delivered surplus after surplus. A Labor opposition was going to the Australian public with a policy whose architect is the want-to-be Treasurer, the member for Lilley, who wanted to make all of those families in those tax scales worse off. There has never been a greater threat to the prosperity of Australian families than the election of a Labor government.

That is also backed up by the member for Melbourne who, since 1994, has told this place that he takes no pride whatsoever in this country having one of the lowest tax rates in the OECD. He actually wants to see a death duty brought back. That is what he has said in this place. He said that when he was on the government benches. God help us all if he gets the chance to be the architect of another tax policy along with the member for Lilley! That is the real threat that Australian families face—not just to their jobs but to the real income that helps them to provide the future their children deserve.