Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. The government has spent the last 12 months fighting Labor's bigger, better, fairer tax cuts. So, after six years of cuts and chaos and just six weeks from an election, does the Prime Minister seriously expect that his last-minute decision to imitate Labor's bigger, better, fairer tax cuts will con the Australian people into believing that the last six years of chaos, cuts and division didn't happen?

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

This is why we know Labor can't run the economy—because they can't add up. We legislated a $144 billion personal-income-tax plan after the last budget, and the Labor Party want to reduce that by $70 billion. The Labor Party want to put up taxes on hardworking Australians. They want to put up taxes on retirees and people who have saved and paid taxes all their lives. The most insulting thing that the Labor Party have said about their appalling retirees tax is, 'They don't pay any tax.' These Australians have paid tax all of their lives, and this Leader of the Opposition wants to put a tax of $5 billion a year on retirees.

Here they are, walking around the chamber like Brown's cows, because they don't want to face the truth. They don't want to face the truth that under Labor you will always pay more. And we learnt this week that it won't be just the $200 billion of higher taxes—

Mr Hill interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Bruce is warned!

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

because of their big carbon target. You can call it a carbon tax. You can call it a carbon price. All I know is that people are going to be paying more because of the reckless targets that the Labor Party want to put on everything that moves. They want to tell farmers what they can do on their property. They want to tell you what car you have to buy. This is a tax that is going to cost Australians in their wages $9,000 a year. This is what the Labor Party's reckless carbon target is going to do to our economy. And, more than that, $36 billion of cost is going to be heaped on the businesses of Australia.

Now, it takes a special form of genius for the Labor Party to come up with a tax that doesn't even pay to the government. Under the member for Lilley, we had the mining tax that didn't raise any revenue. That was a special form of Labor genius. But $36 billion of forcing companies to buy foreign carbon credits from Kazakhstan or somewhere else. How are businesses going to pay higher wages if they have to pay foreign carbon traders $36 billion? This is a tax on everything that moves, and the Leader of the Opposition can't even explain the details of it. He's had 5½ years to explain to the Australian people how he is going to meet his reckless 45 per cent emissions reduction target. Well, the simple answer is this: he's going to make Australians pay more for absolutely everything.