Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Since coming to office, Labor has added $144 billion of debt, and the most recent budget says Australia will be in deficit for at least the next 10 years. Treasury has now advised the government that the only way it can fix its broken budget is by raising taxes on hardworking Australians. Last week the Prime Minister refused to rule this out. Will the Prime Minister now rule out raising taxes on hardworking Australians?

Hon. Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The Treasurer will cease interjecting. When the House comes to order—the leader was heard in silence, so we're just going to make sure everyone's getting a good dose of respect today.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We've just been through an election with two alternative propositions. The one on this side of the House was giving tax cuts to every single Australian taxpayer, all 14 million of them, building on the tax cuts that we introduced and implemented from 1 July last year, making a saving of around $50 for people out there, for average workers, making a difference—not just representing people who are members of parliament but representing the people who are in our constituencies. And, when we made that announcement, I well recall those opposite saying that they would roll it back. Absolutely, they would roll it back. I well remember that.

So, when the Treasurer came to the budget in March of this year with a proposition for not one but two tax cuts over the next term—this term now—of government, we thought, 'Well, they'll just wave it through. They won't commit to the same position that they did last time,' which was to say they opposed it before they knew what it was. Then they said they'd roll it back and then they said we should have an early election on it. But sure enough, as night follows day, we overestimated them, because what they did was say they were opposed to it, then they voted against it and then they said they would introduce legislation into this parliament during this term to increase taxation for all 14 million Australians.

But it takes some credit—given the question asks about debt as well as taxation. Not only did they actually have a plan to increase taxation; they had a plan to increase the deficit over two years as well. Creative, if nothing else, are those opposite.

We have reduced the debt by $177 billion. We produced two budget surpluses and a reduced deficit from the current year and for the years—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister will pause. The Leader of the Opposition on a point of order.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My point of order is on relevance. There was a direct question: will the Prime Minister now rule out raising taxes on hardworking Australians? Will you, Prime Minister?

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question contained quite a bit of information before that part of the question. And I understand we had that debate last week about short answers and short questions. But this one, when you add extra things in—obviously the Prime Minister is giving context to his answer about that; he's got 30 seconds remaining, and he'll need to be directly relevant to the question he was asked.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Less debt and lower taxes on this side of the House; more debt and higher taxes on that side of the House. They've got a private member's bill to wipe out every bit of emissions policy going back to John Howard in the year 2000. Will they introduce a private member's bill to increase the income tax for all 14 million Australian taxpayers? I wait for one of their backbenchers to do that, because that's what they all went to the 3 May election promising.