Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer update the House on how the government has acted to ensure Australians and Australian businesses keep more of the money that they earn so that they can create more opportunities for themselves? Is the Treasurer aware of any high-taxing alternative proposals?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bonner for his question. I am aware of a high-taxing alternative put forward by the Labor Party. But, in our budget this year, we set out a plan for a stronger economy, and that plan was based on ensuring that all Australians who were having a go were going to get a fair go, and the way they were going to get that fair go was by ensuring that they got to keep more of the money they themselves earned. And that plan is working. That plan for a stronger economy is working: 95,200 young people got a job in 2017-18. That is the strongest fiscal year growth in youth employment in 30 years—since before Taylor Swift was born! That's how far you've got to go back for a better year of fiscal growth in youth employment in this country. The Labor Party may want to 'shake that off', but we're not going to 'shake it off', because we know a plan for a stronger economy is what Australians need, and the way you deliver that for them is by backing them in. We're backing them in with lower taxes and we're backing them in with plans for lower electricity prices, for cheaper electricity.

Ten million Australians are benefiting from our legislated personal tax plan. For a dual-income family on modest earnings, that's over $1,000 extra a year, and that's about half of their annual electricity bill. But there's more to come, with policies that are putting further downward pressure on electricity prices, and our tax plan that reaches out over the next eight years to ensure that all Australians who are working hard and paying tax can get that tax relief.

The other thing about our plan is that it doesn't accept the Labor Party view, which is that, to help someone, to give someone a fair go, you've got to attack someone else—just like they seek to do on business and they seek to do through personal taxes as well. Our plan for lower taxes for all working Australians rejects the Labor Party's politics of envy. Their politics of envy have led them to seek to put $200 billion and more in higher taxes on the Australian economy—taxes on housing, on investment, on savings, on wages, on small businesses and on family businesses; and taxes on retirees to the tune of around $5 billion a year. It is a tax plan from the Labor Party that is dripping with envy, and it will drain away the Australian economy if the Labor Party ever get their chance to take that huge burden of tax and throw it on the Australian economy. Under Labor, Australians will pay too much tax, way too much tax, for one simple reason: Labor cannot control their spending and, as a result, they will put $200 billion and more on the Australian economy. Under Labor— (Time expired)